


In the Shadow of Old Mountains

by HeironymousPosh



Category: RimWorld (Video Game)
Genre: Adventure, Explicit Language, Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Suspense, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29033364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeironymousPosh/pseuds/HeironymousPosh
Summary: Two men, exiled from their respective homes and enslaved by cruel strangers, are given a task: dig. They work beneath a mountain in a foreign land, isolated with only each other for company.Shadows lengthen and strange things begin happening as the two men are forced to come to terms with their past, face the present, and struggle for their future as they find themselves facing a nebulous threat emerging from beneath the old mountains they toil within. They find themselves fighting for their lives as their situation begins to unravel and are forced to make difficult decisions as they come to terms with an untouched mystery of the universe that expands beyond the rimworld they inhabit.
Kudos: 2





	1. Adam - 1

Adam found his mind wandering back to _her_ as the shuttlecraft banked sharply to the right, and his stomach lurched with it. With luck, he would be able to retain the meagre breakfast they had given him by the time the craft landed. 

_Why are you still thinking about her? Because she’s the reason you’re here, dummy._

The shuttlecraft continued to roll into an unpleasantly sharp bank, the pilot obviously neither familiar with its controls nor flight in general. Judging by the churning in his stomach and the machine-gun popping in his ears, they were descending, and rapidly. 

“Hey. Hand me the spliff!” a voice roared, barely audible over the scream of the shuttle’s engines. Adam wrinkled his nose and caught a whiff of the pot again. It was rank, and probably barely fit for human consumption, but it was probably the only strain available on this planet. He could hear the other captive sitting next to him cough, likely having taken a deep breath at the wrong time. 

“Why is this stuff always shit?” a second voice asked, struggling to make itself heard. Conversation during the journey had been light but his captors were growing bored and trying to make the trip a little more eventful. He couldn’t blame them, but he wished they hadn’t lit up that spliff. The smell was intolerable in the cramped confines of the shuttle’s belly. 

He wished overall that he weren’t there at that very moment - his hands cuffed in front of him, a thin metal collar around his neck crushing his windpipe, a blindfold over his eyes, the smell of rancid pot infiltrating his nostrils, and sweat pooling on the back of his neck and creeping down his back in uncomfortable rivulets. He also wished he had not pushed that girl.

_But that was your job. You were supposed to be tough._

_Was. Were._

“Can’t get anything better out here,” the first voice responded, a little delayed as he began coughing repetitively. “Unless...you go to the cities…”

“Fuck that. I’d rather cope.” The smell wafted lazily throughout the cabin. The third man present with them had said nothing during this time, and had not even betrayed his presence with a cough or a rogue sniffle. If he hadn’t been the one to lead Adam into the shuttle’s hold in the first place, Adam would have assumed he wasn’t even there. 

_Maybe he’s a ghost._

The other captive shifted uncomfortably and then coughed again. Adam had not been able to get a good look at him when they were being brought out of detention. The blindfold was thin and, given enough light coming through, he could discern certain hazy qualities of nearby objects. But the shuttle, being the ragtag piece of rimworld shit tech that it was, did not even have functioning overheads. The only lighting in the hold came from the ancient emergency LEDs bolted into the rickety durasteel floor, hardly enough light to allow for anything more than rudimentary tasks. When the journey had began, it had been dark enough that Adam had started to feel the tendrils of anxiety begin to creep in and take hold of him. Only by focusing on certain smells and sounds - the whine of the engines, the scent of bad rim-pot, the distant voices of the guards as they made idle talk on and off - could he avoid the surge of panic that he knew would have eventually come. 

The descent leveled off and he could tell they were near their destination as the shuttle began to cut thrust and banked sharply again to make a vertical landing. The whine of gears and solenoids suggested that landing gear were being deployed, and the craft bounced twice upon impacting the ground, its aging suspension coils imparting more of the shock of landing than they should have. Adam felt his teeth and his tongue meet and within seconds tasted blood, an excellent omen of things to come at his new “job”.

“About time,” one of the voices said. “It’s a long trip.”

“Not as long as the one to 12. Fuck 12,” the other voice said, and the first speaker murmured a wordless assent. Just as Adam was attempting to parse out what they might be referring to, a firm but calm hand gripped his shoulder. 

“We’re here,” said the ghost. “Up and at ‘em.” The voice was polite and even tinged with distant benevolence, but he could tell that it was the sort of authoritarian voice that could not be disobeyed. Adam did as the ghost commanded and rose along with his neighbor, then let himself be marched out of the shuttle’s hold into a new environment. 

Contrary to the murky swamp he had been imprisoned in, where breathing the air in felt like sucking down a spoonful of hot soup, this new environment was warm but dry, and a gentle breeze carried with it a pleasant smell reminiscent of evergreen needles. The blindfolds were removed and, as soon as Adam’s eyes had adjusted themselves to the onslaught of light, he found himself standing in some kind of ravine sandwiched between two sets of mountains, with a massive bowl-like quarry in front of him adjacent to the nearest mountain.

“Welcome to X-16, gentlemen,” the ghost announced, and for the first time Adam could see his features from top to bottom. He was a middle-aged man with waning salt-and-pepper hair, cut low and clean, with a sharp jawline, a broad chest, and good posture. He was dressed in fading military fatigues with sparse rigging attached to the chest and back, and a rugged-looking urbtech sidearm at his hip. Adam recognized it as one of the same models he had seen many times back home, whenever someone at his club had gotten rowdy enough to require the intervention of urban security. 

“My name is Lt. Tuzel. Burkay Tuzel,” he introduced himself cordially. “I am this site’s security overseer. The primary overseer for all sites will be paying a visit from time to time but, for all intents and purposes, I am in charge of you.” He extended his arm in a sweep of the vast expanse of chewed-up and jagged rock before them. “And this is your assigned digsite. X-16.” 

Adam could feel bile rising in his throat as Lt. Tuzel continued to speak, debriefing them on the important aspects of the site and the digging and mining work they were expected to be doing. He turned his head to get a good look at his fellow captive for the first time. The man standing beside him was pale and looked clammy, had rheumy eyes and a thin mouth that betrayed no sign of emotion, and a heavy barrel chest and thick arms that suggested a history of manual labor. He looked empty. 

“...and I’m told that the likelihood of there being a mineral cluster beneath this mountain is high, but a surveyor has yet to come for a closer look,” Tuzel said, and Adam realized that he had completely zoned out for a few moments. He had missed a chunk of the debriefing and wondered if that was going to end up being a regrettable decision.

“Do you two have any questions?”

Tuzel made eye contact with both of them but the captive next to Adam said nothing. His eyes were fixated on some point off in space that Adam could not discern so he took it upon himself to nod affirmatively, which was apparently enough to satisfy the lieutenant, who gave them a warm but brief smile.

“Well, gentlemen. The work here will be difficult, but I’m here to help you out. I know that must feel like an empty promise-”

_You enslaved us. What were you expecting?_

“-but my goal here is to ensure that you’re supported in your efforts. If we strike it rich here, rest assured you will be released and even rewarded. You have my promise.”

It was an empty promise but the last thing that Adam wanted to do was antagonize three armed men who could easily pummel him into submission. He had learned more than a few tricks in his time as a bouncer, but he had also learned that a one-on-three fight was not likely to end well for the outnumbered party. 

“The primary overseer will be arriving by tonight to survey the site,” Tuzel informed them as he cast a quick glance at his wristwatch. “If I can offer you one piece of advice - you’re being monitored. Closely.” Tuzel tapped his neck to emphasize his point, and Adam was keenly aware of his collar again. “Run off, and you’ll find out just how serious your overseer takes his job.” The grave look on Tuzel’s face suggested this was not an invitation to try their luck. He would say no more, however, and with a wave of his hand and a curt nod he bid the escorts to follow him back to the shuttle craft. Within a minute’s time the craft had retracted its landing gear and, with a hideous whine of the overworked engines, risen into the air again and lifted away. 

The man beside him collapsed to his knees, buried his face in his hands, and moaned. Adam decided now was a good time to move away and let his enslaved comrade have some space and peace. 

The site where they had been dropped off was a small ridge overlooking the much larger quarry that had already partially subverted the mountainside. Steep walls of limestone and dolomite and varying layers of lesser sedimentary rock descended at least a hundred feet to a flat floor of dirt and rock rubble at the bottom, which bounded a yawning maw of a crevasse in the mountainside with numerous apertures within that suggested the initial excavations had uncovered a cave system. From his vantage point atop the ridge, Adam could barely discern any details within the cave’s aperture, but he thought he initially saw somebody moving within, as a nebulous shape took form and then just as quickly melded with the darkness again. It was, more than likely, the work of his fatigued and overwhelmed brain trying to keep the pace with reality around him.

_You need a moment of rest. Then...well, what comes next?_

The site had no infrastructure of which to speak of. The initial excavators had left a couple pallets’ worth of basic materials that appeared to include canvas tents and packaged survival equipment, but little in the way of study infrastructure or something to produce electricity. To Adam, it looked less like a quarry and more like a grave just waiting for him to jump in.

He turned around to find that his partner had ceased his moaning in the dirt but was now staring up at the mountain, almost catatonic, unmoving. Though he would never say it aloud, Adam felt better about his situation just by the fact that his comrade seemed to be totally out of his depth. He decided it would be a good idea to try and snap him out of his catatonic state and attempt some kind of introduction. 

“Well, we’d best get on with it. The name’s Adam...er, Adam Adagimyan. And...you?” Adam realized, with his heart skipping a beat, that his partner may not even speak the same language as him. Hell, he didn’t know _what_ kind of languages were spoken on a rimworld like this one. This man could be utterly foreign and might not even understand why he was in his current predicament. But that was not the case, not this time. The man spoke.

“Why are we here?”

It wasn’t an answer to Adam’s introductory question, but Adam was just quietly relieved that his comrade could speak his language.

“What do you mean?”

The stranger turned to him slowly, almost unnervingly so. He seemed to be taking an unsettling amount of time to process everything around him. 

“Why did they bring us here?” the man asked, his eyes blinking rapidly like they were adjusting to a sudden change in light. “They told me nothing.”

Adam pursed his lips and took in a deep breath. “Well, they didn’t tell me anything either,” he said. “Except that we’re supposed to dig. And look for minerals. That’s...that.”

The other man had nothing to say to that. He nodded his head, suggesting he understood, and that he knew what was being said, but he had nothing of his own to add. 

“What’s your name again?” Adam asked once more. The man nodded again, then spoke. 

“Mole.” Just one word, no last name. 

_Mole?_

First name, presumably, but Adam felt like he was trying to pull teeth talking to this _Mole_. 

_Mole._ More mole than man, perhaps.

So Adam nodded his head in quiet assent and then walked back down into the quarry, wondering if Mole was even going to survive out here. 

As for him, he was determined to at least try. The supplies that had been provisioned for them were enough to get them going, and the tents might not even be necessary after a couple of days - if there was enough wood and rock in the vicinity, they could create a simple shelter that would provide more protection from the elements than bare canvas. But for now, the tents would have to do. 

In short order, Adam had the tents set up and had extracted some basic supplies from the pallets, fully aware that the work would have taken twice as long without his augmentations. 

_At least they didn’t take my arm from me._ The arm had cost him half a fortune, had taken three days to recover from after the amputation and surgery were complete, and had saved his skin in numerous back alley brawls after drunken patrons decided to try their luck with him. 

_And it might yet save my skin again_ , he thought, as the sun began to dip low in the western sky and the shadows began to lengthen. 

* * *

It was nearly dusk when the whine of shuttlecraft engines could be heard again. Adam was sitting in close proximity to a firepit that Mole had set up, as the latter had struck out a bit to find wood and had managed to collect enough sticks and rubbish from the hinterlands around the dig site to make a simple fire. They had not spoken a single word to each other ever since their initial conversation. 

The shuttle set down on the same ridge that they had been dropped off on but it was clearly a newer model of aircraft, judging by the fresh paint and trimmings on it. This, Adam figured, must be the “primary overseer” that their own security overseer had been referring to. To Adam, it seemed like an excessive number of overseers for such a simple project. 

The two men watched as the shuttlecraft disgorged two small-looking men and six burly, clearly well-armed men from its interior bay, who immediately began making the descent down the smooth, gravel-strewn slope that served as the only point of entry into the depths of the quarry. Adam wasn’t sure what to expect from these people but, judging by how he had been treated in the compound after his initial capture, he should not anticipate anything good. 

“So, the two of you haven’t killed each other yet,” one of the smaller men called aloud as they descended into the quarry. He had a paunch, broad and flabby-looking shoulders, and was dressed in worn-out formal clothes with bleached jeans. The other unarmed man with him resembled a human shrew, with sharp facial features, a scrawny build, and pale, pimple-addled skin that suggested a diet that needed improvement.

Adam gave a nod at the comment but could not find the words to respond. The notion of killing his comrade had not even crossed his mind. He had hoped that the feeling was mutual. 

“So, Lt. Tuzel told me that you’ve been well-supplied,” the paunch man said. “Have you been within the site yet?”

“Within?” Adam asked, and then looked back towards the mountain. _Ah. Within._ He shook his head.

“Well, we only recently blasted out some of those tunnels,” paunch said, then grimaced and looked at his compatriot. “You did bring the survey equipment, right?” His compatriot nodded, and tapped a satchel that one of the armed guards was holding.

“Right,” said paunch. “Go ahead and do a run down both sides. Just check for any serious cracks. These two won’t be able to patch them without help. Go.”

He dashed off in the direction of the caves, bearing the satchel of equipment with him. His absence was barely missed as paunch immediately took it upon himself to introduce his status to the two of them.

“My name is George Langley. I am the Primary Overseer of all of these digging sites,” he announced to them, with a bothersome emphasis on _primary_. His tone was downright arrogant and Adam could immediately see why he had been assigned the position of a primary. He was the right fit for that kind of job.

“Gentlemen, you’ve been briefed on your duties here, but I want to impress upon you the _importance_ of your mission here,” he continued. Mole appeared to be barely listening. Adam felt sorry for him.

“The minerals that may be buried beneath this mountain will be a bulwark on which we build our organization, a treasure trove that we can all profit from. Rest assured - should you find them - the profits will be yours to share.”

He smiled gaily at them, but it was a smile bereft of genuine warmth. 

“And do not think of yourselves as slaves,” he urged them. “You are...hmm, not here of your own accord no, but nonetheless…your work here strengthens you. Empowers you. It will bring you out of the slave mentality, and into the mentality of free men. Liberation...within.”

He had planned this speech out to the most minimal of details. The armed bodyguards behind him looked barely engaged with any of it. One was staring off into space, and another was picking at a plump pimple on his neck. No doubt, they didn’t believe a word of it.

“I know you have questions and you probably are wondering why you were chosen for this site,” Langley said, satisfied with the completion of his brief diatribe on liberty. “But rest assured that we know what is good for you. And we expect great things from you two.”

He did not give them any time to ask questions. The surveyor had not yet returned but he was clearly not keen on sticking around. They hung around for a bit while George gave them a bit more detail on their mission - as well as the timetable - but after another ten minutes had been spent, it was clear that they were getting anxious.

Adam took a moment to disengage and grab himself one of the packaged survival meals they had been provided with. Mole was sitting on the ground a little ways away from the meagre fire they had managed to set up, playing with his thumbs as some kind of distraction. He was out of his element and the debriefing had clearly not helped.

Adam sat across from him but said nothing. His stomach was rumbling and the packaged survival meal bore promises of dried venison, a simple mashed potato dish, and dried fruit. As he pored over its contents and sampled some of his excitement withered away a bit, but it was far and above an improvement on the gruel that he had been fed during his brief period of imprisonment with these strange outlanders. 

Minutes passed in silence. The bodyguards shared smokes and chatted with each other but Langley appeared to be growing increasingly upset. Every time Adam turned around to look at him over by the base of the quarry’s entryway, he appeared to be checking his watch. 

Mole coughed into his tattered sleeve, stood up, and began pacing around the tents, his shifting eyes betraying a typhoon of emotions in his head that he dared not vocalize, lest he give life to them. Adam tended the fire but said nothing, feeling as though he were trapped in an increasingly hostile prison cell whose walls were jagged granite and rough-hewn chalk.

After another few minutes, Langley shouted a very egregious expletive and turned to his bodyguards.

“Three of you. Go in there and find him. If he’s hurt, bring him back and we’ll give him medical attention here,” he ordered, ratcheting his tone up every few words as though that would prove inspirational. “Goddamn lousy bastard, getting lost in there…”

Three bodyguards went forward, though Adam noted they moved with hesitation. He could feel their unease, and it was creeping over him too, like a poison entering his body and spreading through his veins. Something was amiss, and that something was amplified by the fact that the dig site was now cloaked in darkness, with the last vestiges of daylight vanishing behind the craggy mountains. 

Mole continued wandering, either blissfully unaware of the situation or opting to ignore it. 

It wasn’t long before the bodyguards returned, with a fourth - though the surveyor was no longer alive. Adam could see it even from afar as they entered his field of vision. The corpse was missing a large section of one leg and had clearly been savaged elsewhere. At some point during his brief foray into the tunnels, he had met his end. 

Langley swore again, though not as loudly or as imperiously as before. Evidently he was not expecting this outcome. 

“Where did you find him?” he asked the bodyguards. He kept his distance, as though afraid he might meet the same fate simply by approaching. Adam kept his silence. Mole had just vanished into one of the tents. 

“Not far from the entrance. Looks like he tried to run,” one of them said, as they dropped the corpse down. The firelight illuminated the emotions painted on their faces; perturbation, anxiety, concern. They fidgeted in place as Langley swore again and withdrew, consulting with one of the aides that had come with him. Adam virtually held his breath as he overhead the three bodyguards whispering among each other, as they pulled out and lit smokes in a tight circle. 

“We should’ve sent him in armed.”

“You think it would’ve helped?”

“Nah. Maybe.”

“What do you think...insectoid?”

“I’ve seen a lot of insectoid bites. This doesn’t look like it. See how clean the wounds are?”

“Shit...yeah.”

“That’s not a mandible. That’s something else.”

“Yeah.”

“No slime, neither. Didn’t see or smell any.”

“Shit, yeah…”

Adam’s sensation of being imprisoned was growing more and more overbearing. By the time Langley returned and ordered the bodyguards to bring his surveyor’s remains back to the transport, he was almost willing to beg for a reassignment.

 _Take me back to the prison cell if you have to_ , he wanted to say. _Anywhere but here._

But he bit his lip and remained silent. Langley had no further words to say to him, regarding him as little more than a ghost - a dead man, fate already sealed - as he and his team departed. Their shuttlecraft roared to life, lifted into the air with a lurch, and vanished into the night sky, leaving them behind. 

_Two dead men_ , Adam thought to himself, as he absentmindedly stoked the fire and felt exhaustion begin to wash over him as he felt like accepting his fate. _And they won’t even talk to each other._

* * *

Adam awoke to an unusual sound, the rustling of gravel beneath a light foot. Not a human foot, but something padded, something that wanted to remain stealthy. His heart leapt into his chest and put him into panic mode before he could even get his bearings.

The fire had died down to a pile of smoldering embers, busy chewing through the last chunks of scorched wood that remained in the pit, but he could still see the outline of something pressing up against the pallets of supplies. It was, to his relief, appearing no larger than a calf - but that was still a larger entity than he was willing to take on. Whatever it was, it appeared to be rummaging through the packaging, reaching into the pallet and shifting the contents around. 

As he stepped backwards and attempted to shuffle towards the tents, his feet scraped gravel and made a noise. The creature stopped rummaging and for a second, the campsite was as silent as a tomb. Then, with a howl that shattered the facade of silence, it leapt at him. 

100+ pounds of fur and muscle bowled into him and knocked him to the ground, sending him sprawling back over the firepit and narrowly dodging burning embers. In the fading firelight he could make out feline features, a protruding spinal column, a well-defined jaw, and sharp teeth that were seeking his throat. He rolled out of its way as it attempted to pounce on his exposed neck, but it would only buy him a few seconds.

Mole was now up and out of the tent but he was scrambling to figure out how to react to the scene in front of him. And, in one corner of his mind, Adam could not blame him; but he was also desperate for help as the wildcat rolled on its heels and turned to pounce on him again. His one saving grace in the case of Mole’s inaction would be the life changing decision he had made for his job four years ago. 

As the cat advanced, Adam lashed out with his left arm, palm open in the hopes of obtaining purchase somewhere on the beast’s body. His hand met the cat’s neck and he closed his fingers tight, creating a vice grip around the creature’s throat.

The bionic arm was more than a match for the beast in spite of its size and strength. It clawed and kicked ferociously at his arm but could not penetrate its synthylene outer shell, try as it might. It hissed and spat and gasped at him but he held it tight in his vice grip until he was sure that its resolve had broken and fear had overcome its base desire for food and defense. And when he was certain of that, he whipped his arm back and flung the beast as far as he could.

The cat sailed into the air, landing in the gravel and rock rubble at least thirty feet away, and took off into the night, leaving little puffs of dust in its wake as it fled. For his part, Adam was thankful that the creature had some sort of survival instinct in it. He had no wish to kill. 

“I don’t understand,” Mole said, having emerged from the tent and drawn a charred stave of wood from the firepit as a weapon.

“Don’t understand what?” Adam asked, catching his breath.

“How you did that.”

“How I-”

He paused and looked down at his arm. _How to explain such a thing to somebody who will never understand it?_

“My arm...it’s a weapon of its own,” Adam said, hoping that would suffice as an explanation. And it did, seemingly. Mole nodded solemnly, even bowing his head a little bit as though in deference, but had nothing more to say on the matter. He set his stave back in the firepit and retreated back into the tent without a word. 

Adam sat down in the dirt, feeling drained. Every time he had wielded the arm in a fight before, he felt unusually exhausted. _The strain of your brain attempting to interface with the controls_ , the surgeons had explained to him before when he had asked. But he had no regrets about it, especially since it plausibly just saved his life. His only hope was that he would not have to do it again anytime soon. 

The silence was deafening as he fell asleep yet again, ignoring survival instinct and collapsing into slumber out in the open. The last thing he thought about was home, and how he would likely never go back again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello to anybody who got this far.
> 
> It has been a long time since I've written fiction. Years, actually. I decided in the middle of this pandemic to give it a shot again and really push myself to make something interesting, thoughtful, and worth putting here. This is the end result. All ten chapters are written and edited but I want to space them out a bit. That said, this piece is done and will be put here in its entirety.
> 
> For the record, this is inspired by a small part of the first time I played Rimworld. The idea of two men being enslaved and thrown into an unfamiliar situation caught me and I developed the rest from there. I also owe inspiration for this to H.P. Lovecraft, an awful man but an excellent author. Inspiration is also owed to Edgar Allen Poe, N.K. Jemisin, and of course Tynan Sylvester for making something as great as Rimworld. Please feel free to critique my style, structure, characters, or whatever you prefer. I welcome all feedback as I want this to be a way for me to improve my prose and develop more in the future. 
> 
> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy!


	2. Mole - 1

Mole dreamed about home that night. It was more torment than relief. 

Exhausted and beleaguered, his mind wandered to the last bastion of familiarity it could conjure up, but it was a cruel return home. In his dream he was in the caves of his cradle days again, the familiar labyrinth of tunnels, carved-out homes, and causeways that he had spent his youth in. In his dream he returned to Hosco’s butchery in the topmost level of the cave, very near to the only entrance, and gallivanted past familiar homes and hearths whose owners he knew and loved dearly.

It was all gone now. He woke up with tears dried on his face and an ache in his belly that reminded him of how malnourished he was. The metal collar around his neck burned and every time he tried to loosen it for comfort, it fell back into position, choking him. Try as he might to ignore the realities of his situation and fulfill his aching need to return to the ghost of home, he could not. 

The stranger named Adam had already risen and was tending to the fire, which had died overnight. Mole could not figure out what to make of this stranger who spoke of strange things and wore strange clothes. Mole had treated him as a potential enemy, like all the thunder-men he had encountered so far, but he was quiet and reserved and had not done anything to harm Mole. Adam was a slave too, and they were in the same situation together, but Mole still had his reservations. 

Without rising from his bedding, Mole cracked open a nearby tin of whitefish and began to sullenly eat, caring little for whether or not it was tasteful. His appetite had been left behind at home, along with all of his belongings and memories, and he had little desire to retrieve it. 

_ If that rockslide had buried me too _ , he thought, as he sucked down flaky chunks of bland fish covered in a film of oil,  _ then none of this torment would be happening. I could be at peace.  _

But it had not buried him. He had been the unlucky chosen one, in the right place at the wrong time. He finished off the tin and tossed it aside, droplets of oil splattering the cheap polyester bedding as the tin rolled off into the corner of the tent and came to a stop next to the others that were now forming a pitiable refuse pile.

Mole spent a few more minutes feeling sorry for his position and wishing for the release of death before deciding that enough was enough, and that he had no other choice but to get up and face his situation. He rose from the tent to find that the sun had not yet ascended past the rugged peaks to their east, yet the temperature was already rising. 

_ At least we’ll be under the mountain. Or, at least, I hope. _

Adam had not seemed too eager to get to work, considering that he was still stoking the fire and nursing a rectangular bar of compressed grains and dried fruit that reminded Mole of the pemmican his tribe would make en masse every autumn. He suddenly found himself missing the taste of the familiar style of pemmican they would always make; it was unlikely that whatever Adam was eating would even come close to it. 

“You ever been in a cave before?”

The words caught Mole off his guard. He acknowledged and understood them, but he found himself surprised yet again that his new compatriot was speaking to him. He turned to meet Adam’s eyes and found them looking up at his, bearing the telltale signs of fatigue. 

“Yes,” he replied, after a few seconds of hesitation, remembering with a sharp sting of embarrassment his complete inability to process words yesterday, after so much time spent under duress and with little sleep in the thunder-mens’ cold cells. “I grew up in one.”

“Oh,” Adam said, with a slight hint of surprise. “Well...I guess you’ll be at home here, huh?”

_ Home _ . The word itself felt painful to hear, much less say. 

“Yes,” he acknowledged, but could bring himself to say nothing more. He wanted to sit down and beg the gods of water and rock for a miracle of life or the indulgence of passing on, but he knew neither would come. He had spent three days begging for such things before, and nothing had happened. Nature had watched on with passive cruelty as he had sat at the entryway where his community had once existed, now swallowed up by rock and stone and buried beneath the hill that had once been its roof. No one had answered him. 

“I still don’t know what they expect us to find,” Adam said, trying to make some sort of conversation. “They...didn’t tell me much. None of them did.”

Mole nodded. He hadn’t been given much information either. Whatever they had told him had bounced off him like a hailstone on a mountain. In his fog, their words had been imperceptible. 

“We just have to dig,” he said, deciding it would be worthwhile to speak up rather than linger in fruitless silence. “Dig until we…”

“Find something,” Adam finished the sentence. “Yeah. Whatever something is.”

Neither of them were particularly enthusiastic after the events of yesterday. Mole had been in a mental state for most of it, but he had taken note of the fundamental events that had occurred. Someone had been killed, and not in an expected or welcomed way. Something was very amiss and now the two of them had been left to their own devices to face it. 

“Do we have any equipment?” Mole asked, as a way of breaking the silence but also attending to a very practical matter.

Adam made a lazy motion towards the stacked pallets by their tents. “There’s some basic gear in there. Some explosives, too, though nothing too fancy - oh, and markers. In case we get lost.”

Mole could not envision himself getting lost in any sort of underground space, familiar as he was with landmarking and navigation in tunnels, but Adam may need the help. 

“Are you good with a pick?” Mole asked, trying to gauge his partner’s efficiency with work. 

“Nah, not particularly,” Adam replied. 

Mole pointed to his left arm. “You’ve got strength, though. Just need practice.” 

Adam laughed the comment off but Mole was serious. There had been few men in his tribe willing, much less able, to go toe-to-toe with a  _ bakhnah  _ wildcat. The fact that Adam had been able not only to pluck the creature up off the ground but hold it in spite of its wild clawing and kicking was nothing short of a miracle. He had the strength and endurance of a demigod, perhaps one of the thunder-mens’ strange gifts. 

With the heat building and no escape in sight - Mole  _ did  _ remember what their intimidating handler had said about running off - the best plan of action seemed to be heading underground. With a great expenditure of psychological effort, Mole heaved himself up and made for the pallet. He was ready to return to a more comfortable and familiar environment, even if it wasn’t home.

“Ready for work, I take it?” Adam asked, his voice tinged with a hint of anxiety. 

“We have nothing else to do but dig,” Mole replied, already finding a few tools to his liking. He had found a sturdy set of picks, a handful of small spades, and some strange spark-tools buried beneath a box of jerked meats and a container full of loose metal items, judging by the sound it made. 

“Well, I suppose so,” Adam agreed. “But...maybe we could wait a few more minutes?”

Mole paused and turned back towards Adam. “What for?”

“Well...we should come up with a plan,” Adam said. “A...few plans, maybe. And an emergency plan.”

Mole sensed something was off. “We have an emergency plan. Stick together and mark our path.”

Adam disagreed with that analysis. “Well, what about…” 

As he rattled off contingencies and possible disasters, Mole felt obliged to collect the tools he needed and prepare to set off. Adam seemed to be in no hurry to go underground. Why wait up for him, then? 

As Adam continued talking, mostly to himself at this point, Mole grabbed a stave of wood from the firepit and set off towards the great gaping wound in the mountain’s side, which by his estimate must have been at least seventy feet high and twenty or so feet wide, more than enough space to fit several men abreast. As he approached the gap, he stopped to appreciate the vastness of it all. It felt like he was stepping into the maw of a giant.

Heavy footfalls behind him broke him from his stupor. Adam was not far behind, seemingly changing his mind about taking their time before going down. 

“Well, if you’re going down there, I don’t want you going alone,” Adam said as he came up beside Mole. “That would be...ah, dangerous.”

Mole noticed that Adam’s hands were shaking as he looked over and gave him an affirmative nod. Then he pressed on into the giant’s mouth. 

The aperture in the mountain, blasted out by the strange concoctions that the thunder-men used, had exposed a plateau of dark brown rock jutting out over an open space that descended to a flat, fairly clean floor about forty feet down. A makeshift ladder as well as a more impressive-looking cart-and-winch system had been installed to provide two methods of descent, depending on whatever one was more comfortable with. Unfamiliar with technology and not interested in learning at such a moment, Mole opted for the ladder. Adam, seemingly indecisive, chose the ladder after a moment’s thought. 

The space below was poorly lit. 

“They could’ve put up more lamps,” Adam muttered as they reached the bottom, the ladder straining under both their weights and the weight of their collected tools.

“Lamps?” Mole asked.

“Yeah. Lamps.” Adam pointed to the lights placed at the bottom of the ladder, hooked up to a rusty-looking machine. 

_ Spark-lights. Lamps.  _ Mole had a difficult time with some of these words and ideas.  _ Not spark-lights. Lamps. Lamps.  _ He decided to test his knowledge later and focus on the job now. Maybe he would ask Adam for help, if the two remained on cordial terms. 

The space at the bottom of the ladder was wide and high-roofed and presented several options. There were man-made corridors on both the left and right sides of the room, each one able to comfortably fit a man within them, and in front of them a wide natural tunnel surged forward into the mountain, swallowing up the pathetic amount of light that the two lamps cast in front of them. 

“Well, which way?” Adam asked, his voice shaky. 

Mole moved for the natural tunnel. It felt more welcoming to him than the tighter tunnels that were clearly dug by the unskilled hands of a man, and could lead anywhere. 

The natural tunnel soon joined up with a small natural channel in which a shallow rivulet of water flowed about ten feet below them, tracking steadily downwards. There were no lights down here except for the handheld spark-light that Adam had, and his own makeshift torch. Adam’s light bounced off the crusty, water-wet walls of the corridor as he moved it around unsteadily, surveying the environment around them. As they pressed on the water grew visibly deeper and their walkway became steeper and steeper, until they reached a point where the path ahead of them plateaued out alongside the water, then dipped down into the stream and disappeared. 

“End of the line,” Adam whispered. “Well, I guess we can, uh, head back, if you-”

Mole cut him off and moved his torch over to the wall. His eyes, used to the darkness beneath the surface which he found natural, had spotted the opening in the wall, marked with a crude etching above it that was barely visible in the firelight. Adam turned his handheld device towards the wall and illuminated it so the text could be read:

  
“ _ TUNNEL - 150 FEET - CRAWL” _

“Ah, fuck,” Adam swore, his voice barely audible. “No, no, no.”

Mole was already getting to his knees, stave held out in front of him. This would be uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar. 

“We’ll have to widen this at some point-”

“No, no, I can’t. No.”

“-but for now we’ll have to crawl-”

“No, absolutely not. No.”

Adam was taking steps backwards. Mole turned back to console him but it was already too late. Adam had departed, the faint beam of light from his handheld wildly scanning the sides and roof of the corridor as he ran back up the walkway, slipping several times on the wet rock but managing to regain his footing as he fled. He would not even listen as Mole shouted several times at him, fruitlessly. He vanished from view within seconds, his light leaving with him. 

Mole was left with the rush of flowing water ringing in his ear and the rush of adrenaline pounding through his veins as he realized he was now alone. Accustomed to the darkness and tight spaces as he might be, there was something about this tunnel that unnerved him. But a job had to be done, and running back after Adam to try and reason with him seemed fruitless.

_ Panic _ , Mole knew.  _ Panic had taken its toll. There’s no reasoning with that.  _ And so he got down on his hands and knees, held his stave out in front of him, and began crawling into the pitch black space in front of him. 

The tunnel could not have been more than a foot and a half high, with the back of Mole’s head scraping up against the wet rock multiple times as he inched forward, propelling himself with his knees and his elbows. The stave proved to be less than effective at illuminating anything more than three or four feet in front of him, and he could feel his gut twisting itself into knots at the notion that he may be crawling into something dangerous. If the tunnel ended in a dropoff or a rock wall, he would face a long backwards wiggle all the way out - doable, but not exactly ideal. 

To his relief, it opened up into yet another corridor, about the same size as the last one but deprived of water and with two paths to branch out on. After a moment’s deliberation, he picked the left path.

The cave appeared virtually untouched by mankind. The initial diggers had likely not progressed past the tunnel, as Mole could see none of the telltale signs of human interaction with the environment around him. There were no grease marks where a clumsy spelunker might have rested his hand or obtained purchase to pull himself up and along, no bootprints in the wet sediment that the constant dripping of water deposited, and no signs of torches or the lamps that the advanced men used. It felt very untouched and clean, except Mole could not feel anything but a remote discomfort about the space he was in. As he walked past branching side-paths that a man could not fit through and alcoves that his torch could not penetrate, he couldn’t help but feel a distinct anxiety pushing him to turn back.

_ Don’t go any further, this isn’t right, you have never felt this way before _ , it told him, making every step forward a hesitant one.  _ You’ve lived your entire life underground. Why do you feel this way now? Something is wrong.  _

He stopped and waited, straining his ears to hear if anyone or anything was following him. The only sounds that he could catch were the dripping of water, and a distant, subtle breeze blowing his way, from an unknown source.

_ Shake it off, for now _ , he decided.  _ Stay alert. Maybe just a little bit further, then call it a day and see if Adam is alright.  _ Having steeled himself quietly, he pressed on with renewed vigor. 

He did not go far before that vigor melted like facepaint in the sun. He came to a section of the corridor where it sloped downward at a steep angle, but the slope was far from natural.

_ Stairs _ , he thought, as a chill ran through his veins.  _ These have to be stairs.  _

The blocky steps leading down into a solid wall had been smoothed out by the merciless passage of time, but there was no question that they had once been carved by the skilled hand of a human. The fact that they led to nowhere was the worst part.

Mole carefully descended the water-slicked steps, reaching the wall only to find that it contained not even a crack or a cranny to investigate. Its facade was solid and completely flat, as though unmarred by time, and would not give to any push from him. The stairs led to nothing. 

_ There is nothing right about this,  _ the voice came again, returning with a fresh zeal. Growing demented and panicky as it bounced around in his skull, it urged him to run. Gaining control over his increasingly rampant fear he did not run, but walked quickly back up the stairs and made his way back. 

Having regained control over his senses, when he reached the fork in the tunnel he decided to take the right path and see where it led. His rational mind knew that what he was experiencing was something akin to a communal panic, brought on by Adam’s panic earlier -  _ a domino effect _ , he had heard the phrase before. One person’s reaction inspires another, and on and on it would go. 

But rational thinking began to falter and wither away as, within five minutes of traversing the right path, he found two more sets of stairs, branching out perpendicular to each other and both ending at a solid wall. They were the same style that he had seen before - carved with a careful hand, they could not be natural. 

Mole quickly made to retreat but stopped when he heard a noise from farther down the passage, where he had initially come from. It was not a natural sound, like water plinking down a rock stalactite or a crumbling formation meeting its end and spilling out onto the floor. It was something deliberate.

_ Slap. _

The sound of something wet hitting the floor. 

_ Slap. _

Measured movement. Not hurried, but calculated. Like it was carefully following something.

_ Slap. _

Without warning, Mole’s torch sputtered out, extinguished by some unknown phenomenon and leaving him in the darkness. With no other recourse, he pressed himself level up against the nearest stretch of unbroken wall, and began to hold his breath.

The thing that was in the corridor defied description for the time. Animals smelled familiar. No, they  _ stank _ , of wet fur and musk and the shit that they rolled in. Mole could only smell something sharp and acrid as this entity approached, and he could hear it move too.

_ Slap. _

_ Slap. _

_ Slap. _

A pause. Mole felt a sensation tighten around his throat, like a phantom hand reaching around his neck and clenching its invisible fingers around his windpipe. This thing was nearby, yet in the darkness he could see nothing. The slapping sounds paused near to him, as though the thing, of unknown dimensions and structure, could sense him, inert up against the cave wall.

He could only think of one thing, and that was to discard his torch.

_ Not that it’s any more use _ , he thought to himself, as he carefully coiled his arm back and threw it back towards the end of the passage with all his strength. It sailed silently through the air and then clattered down the stairway to nowhere until it landed at the bottom with a dull thud. 

The thing bolted. With a cacophony of slaps and squelching sounds, like a viscous paste being crushed between palms, it moved towards the end of the corridor with vigor heretofore unseen. Mole waited until the fleshy sound faded before he moved back into the corridor and began to creep along, praying to gods that he no longer believed in that the creature would not turn and run back in the other direction, as though it sensed the deception.

Thankfully, it did no such thing.

_ Lucky today _ , he thought to himself as he moved along silently until he could detect the shape of an alcove and hustle inside to allow the thing to pass.  _ Tomorrow, perhaps not so much.  _

He tried to pray but nothing came of it. The thing squelched past, dripping something onto the floor as it moved, and Mole waited until the sounds vanished before he dared emerge again. With no natural light nearby, his eyes could not adjust at all to the blackness, and he was forced to guide his palms along the cave wall to make his way back down the corridor. Several times he cut his hand along jagged portions of the wall that had yet to be worn down by water, and he could feel warm blood running down his wrists as he stumbled through the darkness, wondering if he would even find the tunnel once more.

But he did, eventually, after what felt like hours. The confines of the tunnel almost felt comforting, as if it would provide him safety from the encounter that he had narrowly escaped from. Onward he crawled, using his elbows to propel himself and dragging his bloody hands along the tunnel’s ceiling until he could feel air above him again, and he knew that he was on the other side. 

_ I never thought I would be so glad to see a…lamp _ . He corrected himself quickly, committed to learning the new vocabulary even in his current state of mind. For the first time in his life, he was eager to leave a cave. He catapulted himself up the rickety ladder towards the surface, caring little for its creaks and groans of protest as he hoisted himself up with unprecedented drive, and only when he found himself looking at sunlight again could he feel like the weight had been lifted off of his chest.

He made his way to the campfire, where Adam was sitting as if nothing had happened, setting up a pot of something over the now happily sputtering campfire. When Adam saw him approach, he gave a polite smile and nod.

_ As if nothing had happened _ , Mole noted.

“Well, did you find anything?” Adam asked.

Mole paused, and considered his options.

“No,” he said decisively, and then sat down. 


	3. Adam - 2

“Okay, easy, easy...let it slide down into place…”

Adam could feel the rope burning against his bare skin as he gently lowered the wooden beam into its place until Mole called out for him to stop. It was, thankfully, the last one that they had to do. His hands, his back, and his parched throat would be thankful for the completion of their task.

_ Well, it’s not much. But it beats the tent already _ , he thought as he stepped back to admire their joint handiwork. The little three-room rectangular cabin, built with a mishmash of wood and stone materials and erected on a foundation of cinder bricks they had helped themselves to from the supply pallets, would not be the most comfortable abodes but it would suit their needs. It would be more homey, and far more secure than the tents they had been occupying. With Mole growing tangibly more cooperative since their initial arrival, Adam had more hope for their housing endeavor. 

_ And as long as nobody accidentally starts a fire, we’ll be in good shape. _

The cooking would likely remain exclusive to the outside firepit to prevent such a mishap. 

“Well, what do you think?” Mole asked. 

“I think it’ll do,” Adam replied.

“You sure you don’t want to put up a few extra supports?”

“Positive.”

“Taking a bit of a risk,” Mole chided him, and for some reason the way he said it ticked Adam off. 

“It’s fine,” Adam retorted. “We put in the work. It’ll be alright.” He could feel irritation boiling up in his chest like an overflowing pot threatening to spill over. 

Mole was quick to defend himself, his cheeks growing flushed. “I’m just trying to be certain.”

They began spitting back at each other. “You’re being  _ too  _ certain.”

“I don’t like risks.”

“You have to take some risks sometimes.”

“Spoken like a man who has never faced danger.”

Adam meant to retort but caught himself before the sentence could form in his head. 

_ This isn’t worth arguing over _ , he told himself, but he felt like copping out now would be a blow to his honor. 

“Ah, if you want to put up more fucking support beams, then do it,” Adam said, waving his hand concedingly at Mole. “I’m tired.”

He walked off before Mole could call back at him or swear back. 

Sitting down at the firepit, barely smoldering since it had not been given any attention over the course of the day, Adam felt unusually faint. Though he had been exerting himself and it was certainly a warm day out, he was no stranger to manual labor or exceptional exertion. He decided to swig some water, sit for a moment, and feel it out.

Mole paced around the cabin several times, swearing loudly and appearing to talk to himself but taking no action. Adam watched as he placed his hand on several of the support beams, walked around them, hit the side of the cabin, and pulled at what little hair he had on his head - to no avail. After several minutes of this admittedly disturbing charade, he threw his hands in the air, gave up, and walked back to the firepit too. 

“It doesn’t need anything more. It was a stupid idea,” Mole admitted, visibly and audibly flustered as he sat down. 

They ate their dinner in silence as the light began to wane. Adam felt queasy and failed to find his appetite, and thus poked lethargically at his packaged survival meal as he and Mole avoided conversation. In spite of the silence, Adam noticed some unusual ticks that Mole had begun to develop. He winced irregularly, as though he were in an unspoken pain, and from time to time he’d look over his shoulder, as though expecting someone behind him. 

_ There is something amiss _ , Adam noted.  _ With both of us. _

He, too, had been feeling off.

It had started with the dreams he’d been having. They were not nightmares of the usual variety, that involved scenes and people from his past returning to life to torment him. Rather, they were a tumultuous arrangement of shapes and sounds alien and frightening to him. He could make no sense of the images and experiences in these dreams and it had begun to cost him, draining him of the fortitude that he had started to develop as a result of the difficult work and isolation of this job. Waking up from these dreams was even worse. He would wake up feeling as if there was somebody watching him, and he couldn’t shake the feeling of being trapped. He wanted to flee, run away from the quarry and disappear into the mountains, but he knew he wouldn’t make it far. His overseers were watching, as they had reminded him again in the last two weeks since their previous visit. 

Now he could feel pangs of discomfort from time to time too. It was concentrated directly behind his forehead, like a sinus headache that he just couldn’t shake, and it would come and go at its own leisure. 

_ Perhaps Mole is experiencing the same things _ , he wondered. He hadn’t asked.

It was then, as Mole looked back over his shoulder and made a deep frown as though disappointed, that Adam noticed that there was, indeed, something over his shoulder. Not directly behind him, but up on the hilltop overlooking the quarry, where the chalky walls and granite cliff met the terrain above. There was something unusual there. Something out of place.

“Mole,” Adam whispered, his eyes still fixated on the point where he saw this thing. He was  _ sure  _ there was something there, too. It was not a trick of the light. 

_ Or was it?  _

“Hmm?”

Mole reacted in a sluggish manner, as it took a few seconds for him to register the sound of his own name. But when he saw the concern etched on Adam’s face, he straightened up. Before he could appear alarmed, Adam spoke. 

“Don’t look behind you right now. Don’t. I think I see something up on the ridge up there,” Adam informed him. Mole visibly stiffened, his jaw clenching. Adam could tell that he was resisting the primal urge to look up. 

“Switch places with me, make it look casual. I think somebody is watching us. See if you can see,” Adam said, and then rose up and walked over to the pallets, making it look like he was searching for something amid the supplies. He pulled out an odd item - tinned food that didn’t sound particularly appetizing judging by the label - and returned to the firepit to take Mole’s seat, as Mole began attempting to surreptitiously study the quarry’s rim. 

“Do you see anything?” Adam asked. 

Mole was still scrutinizing the cliffside, but finally his eyes lit up, and he pulled his gaze away and looked down at the firepit.

“Yes,” he said, keeping his head low. “There’s somebody there. I can tell it’s living. They moved.”

“Is it just one?” Adam asked.

“No. Er...I think so. I can’t tell.” 

“Do you think it’s our people?”

“No. Why would they hide like that?”

It was a fair point, but Adam wanted there to be a mundane, pleasant explanation for this. They were being watched by somebody, of unknown persuasion and unknown intention, and not knowing those things was quickly unnerving him.

“He’s moving. He’s backing out of sight,” Mole informed Adam, then turned his gaze back away from the quarry’s rim. “I don’t know if he thinks we see him.”

“Maybe he’s a wanderer,” Adam suggested.    
“Why would a random wanderer spy on us?”

“Dunno.”

Adam wondered what sort of predicament they might be in. Could this person be a scout, or a spy? Could they be desperate for food or money and willing to do violence to obtain either? Could they be dangerous, or just a harmless traveler curious about what two men were doing out in the wilderness on their own? None of the possibilities were particularly comforting. 

“Let’s wait a bit and see if he comes back,” Adam suggested, after a brief moment of reflection on the situation. “We should try and...make it seem like we didn’t notice.”

Mole gave this some consideration, then nodded his head.

“Yes.” He was surprisingly amicable to the plan, given how they had sparred mere minutes ago, but the introduction of this anomalous stranger had given them a rallying point to mobilize and plan around. They were united by a mutual threat, and the arguments they’d suffered through were now forgotten, even if just temporarily. 

About half an hour passed in silence as the two went about simple tasks on their own, not speaking to one another, until Mole decided to take the initiative just before dusk.

“I’m going to go up there and see if I can spot him,” Mole suggested, as the daylight began to fade into an ominous nightfall. Adam’s stomach dropped through his guts to the floor.

“I’m coming with you, then,” he insisted quickly, without a second thought. 

Mole tilted his head and squinted his eyes. “No. I can do this. I need you to stay here and watch the fire.”

Adam shook his head vigorously. “No, no,” he refused hastily. “I can help you. I don’t want to stay here, though.”

The involuntary fear in his voice was audible even to his own ears. No doubt, Mole could hear it too. It softened him somewhat, or perhaps he reconsidered the practicality of setting out alone, and he relented with a repressed sigh. 

“Alright,” Mole said. “Stick near me. Don’t stay by me. We keep our distance, and no lights.”

“No lights?”

“No lights,” Mole reiterated. “Your eyes will adjust.”

He grabbed a long, gnarled stick from a pile of firewood nearby and began to set off, leaving Adam to scramble in his path. Unwilling to remain alone in a dark environment that was feeling increasingly hostile, Adam wanted nothing more than to try and suss out the mystery they were collectively facing. But Mole moved quickly and Adam could see him looking back over his shoulder multiple times, as if to ensure that they were keeping their distance. As they ascended the gravel-strewn incline that led back up to the valley, Mole made a break for scrub on the other side of the ridgetop, and Adam followed suit quickly. In the fading daylight, he ended up scrambling right into a thorn bush, and spent several seconds hissing muttered curses as he extricated himself. 

“You’re clearly not attuned to the darkness.” Mole sounded unimpressed, even disappointed. 

“Did you expect me to be?”

Mole grunted something unintelligible. His form was barely visible in the darkness. The last rays of light had faded and now the only light in Adam’s eyes was the now-distant campfire, marking their cabin down in the quarry below. Adam felt a pang of regret that he did not grab a log or stone from the camp to use as a makeshift weapon. He had the small survival pocket knife that had been provided with their supplies, but it would be of little use in a fight. 

“The valley ahead is fairly exposed. Let’s stick to the brush and creep along until we can gain some altitude,” Mole said. “And stay back.”

With that reminder, Mole began to move again, as Adam pulled thorns out of his clothing and cursed his clumsiness. Mole’s indistinct form merged with the darkness as he forged a path through the brush, virtually silent except for the occasional brush of branch against his clothing. Adam followed behind hesitantly, wondering how much space Mole expected him to maintain. He could see nothing in any direction - ahead, behind, or to the side. Wherever he looked he could see only shadow. 

He swallowed his fear and proceeded.

Mole was somewhere ahead of him but in the darkness Adam couldn’t tell how many paces were between them, or whether Mole had changed directions without alerting him first. With a sudden stab of terror Adam realized that this plan would be an excellent way to dispose of him - Mole, more used to the darkness, would be able to retrace his steps back to camp with ease. Adam would be lost in the wilderness, in the dead of night, and while the thought dissipated quickly the terror did not.

_ Easy. Keep your mind focused _ , he tried to tell himself. If Mole had wanted to get rid of him, there were easier ways to do it. He had plenty of opportunities over the past two weeks, and Adam tried to tell himself that it was just nyctophobia eating away at the rational side of his brain. 

So preoccupied was he with his paranoid fantasies that he almost ran into Mole, who had stopped somewhere in the darkness. 

“Watch your step,” Mole whispered fiercely. His dismay was audible even with his voice so low.

“Why did you stop?”

“I smell somebody,” Mole said.

“Somebody?”

“Definitely a person,” Mole informed him. “Body odor.” Quite succinct, but Adam did not smell anything on the light breeze blowing in from the west. He caught a whiff of smoke from their campfire, and the smells of drywood and a slight earthy scent that he couldn’t quite place. But he didn’t smell anything human other than the stink from Mole’s unwashed rags. 

“How can you tell?” Adam whispered, casting his doubts.

Mole hesitated. “I just can,” he said, then lingered on the thought a bit before formulating a plan. “I think he’s to our left...but forward a bit. Maybe hanging back, he may sense something is wrong.”

He ordered Adam to follow him again, but at a closer distance this time. Adam’s stomach was tied into multiple knots but he obeyed wordlessly, opting to stick close to Mole rather than yield to panic. In order to suppress said panic, he tried to let his mind wander elsewhere.

_ Home _ , he thought.  _ How pleasant it would be...no green spaces, no darkness, nothing to get lost in except for the maze of the com-complex.  _ He missed it so much. He missed the smells, too - that sterile metal stench of freshly welded plasteel in a new construction site, the smells of food from a hundred different cultures cooking in the plazas, the smells of cryptane being vented from the ships coming and going at the ports.  _ None of that here.  _

He followed the path his comrade forged through the brush until he could tell that Mole had stopped again. This time, though, before he could speak up and ask if something was amiss, Mole grabbed his wrist hard and put a single finger to his lips. 

_ No talking. We’re close.  _

Adam did not speak, but he did not have to maintain his silence for long before Mole leapt into action, hurtling out of the brush and into the night like a kestrel diving on some unseen prey. Adam attempted to pursue him but stumbled over rocks and uneven terrain and fell to the ground, barely catching himself with his hands before his face impacted the earth. His palms stung and he inhaled dust and dirt but he got himself to his feet and pressed in the direction of what sounded like a struggle, heedless of potential obstacles in his way as he blindly raced through the night. 

He nearly tripped over the bodies wrestling in the dirt and saved himself only by throwing his body backwards to balance himself out again. In the darkness he couldn’t tell who was who but someone was on top of the other person, hands pressing down on them, likely wrapped around their throat, and one of them was making the  _ ghastliest  _ sounds...and Adam could not just stand there, and-

“Let go of me, fuck!” Mole roared, as Adam attempted to pry the top person off. Adam had not heard Mole raise his voice in such a way since they had arrived, even in moments when they had argued, and it shocked him. His heart skipped a beat, then settled back into its prior rhythm as he realized that Mole had the upper hand in the fight. Somehow, he had managed to get the jump on the intruder and pinned him down. 

“Don’t kill him!” Adam interjected hastily, noticing that the opponent trapped beneath Mole’s body weight was now growing more desperate to free himself.

“I’m not!”

“You’re strangling him!”

“Yeah, it’s just until he stops resist-”

There was a muffled snap, and the struggling died down somewhat. The man on the bottom was still writhing but his hissing and seething had turned to a low, wet gurgling and his hands spasmodically reached for his throat, trying to remove a phantom grievance that was no longer there. Mole had removed his hands from the man’s throat and sat up, surveying his handiwork with a look of concern.

“I broke something,” he said, with a tone that suggested something between hostile indifference and neutral apathy. 

Adam couldn’t see anything but he could smell blood. The man began to spasm more violently, then his choking began to subside as a series of arduous gasps escaped his body in short order. Mole did nothing but sit atop of the dying man, hands at his sides.

Adam could barely breathe. He felt as though a lead block had been placed on his chest. “Did you just kill him?” 

Mole wiped his forehead. “I think so.”

“I told you no-”

“I know, I know,” Mole interjected. “I didn’t mean to.”

The man had fallen silent, and the smell of blood grew more pungent. He was dead.

“Does he have a light on him?” Adam asked, moving on to more practical matters. 

Neither of the two men were particularly concerned that the stranger was freshly dead and began searching his pockets and his ragged fur jacket for something that resembled a light. He had nothing on him but small packets of pemmican, a few jewelry items, and a flint knife that Adam nearly cut his hand open on. 

“No tech,” Adam noted. 

“He’s one of us. A man of the soil,” said Mole.

“What?”

“Not a thunder-man,” Mole clarified. “He’s one like I am. Like I was.”

His voice faltered but Adam heard a rustle in the brush nearby and his heart leapt up into his throat. He rose to his feet, unsteady in the darkness, and tried to call on all of his six senses to discern the nature of this strange new set of sounds that were closer than he’d like.

“What is it?” Mole asked, also rising to his feet. The sounds of soft feet on dirt could be heard but Adam couldn’t triangulate the location - his eyes and ears were unused to the darkness. Mole, on the other hand, seemed to immediately know where this new threat was coming from, but he didn’t seem as perturbed.

“It’s not human,” he informed Adam hastily, though that did little to assuage his fears. Out here in the mountains, the wildlife could be anything. Unfamiliar with this planet and its landscapes and even more unfamiliar with its biosphere, his mind couldn’t help but conjure up terrifying apex predators lurking in the darkness, easily able to take on two adult humans in a single skirmish. But Mole did not appear alarmed and slowly approached the spot where he’d heard the noise. 

“It’s okay,” Mole whispered to something invisible. Adam could only assume that it was not as threatening as he initially thought. He called out.

“What is it?”

“A little one,” Mole called back, then lowered his voice to a whisper. “ _ Don’t be scared. It’s okay. _ ”

Adam could not restrain himself from his curiosity anymore and stumbled over towards the sound of Mole’s voice. Before he could speak, something wet and warm lapped against his leg and he recoiled involuntarily with a strangled cry, surprised at the unexpected sensation.

“It’s a dog,” Mole informed him with annoyance after his outcry. 

The sensation returned but this time Adam was prepared for it. It was licking at his exposed ankle, where brambles had torn up his jeans and left the skin exposed. 

He had never seen a dog in real life before. Oh, he certainly knew what one was. He had been brought up with images, videos, and virtual reality datablocs that had taught him the shape, color, sound, behavior, and style of the dog and a thousand other animals scattered across the galaxy. He had seen dogs in the VR spaces, and in advertisements, and in the pornographic films that had transfixed him as a teenager when he indulged in all of his lustful desires. 

But he had never seen a dog in real life.

“Was it his?” Adam asked as the dog rubbed its scrawny body and beat its tail against his leg. 

“Likely,” Mole answered. “Or possibly. Dunno. He is unusually friendly.”

Mole appeared very comfortable with the creature but Adam was hesitant to engage with it. Perhaps it had disapproved of its previous owner and was pleased with his death; or perhaps it was simply unaware of its past owner’s passing. Either way, Adam’s unfamiliarity gave him pause. 

“We should keep it,” Mole said. 

Adam wrinkled his nose and hesitated. 

Mole noticed. “You disagree?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Adam said. “It feels somehow wrong.”

The creature was panting contentedly in the darkness, unaware of their deliberations over its fate. After a few seconds, Adam relented.  _ Nothing ventured, nothing gained _ , a little voice in the back of his skull whispered into his ear.

“Well, we can take him in,” Adam said. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Mole chuckled lightly. “Ah, you see, this was good,” he said, “you’re already feeling better, aren’t you?”

Adam was not, but he dared not say. It felt like admitting something terribly wrong. 


	4. Mole - 2

The dream always started the same way. He would wake up on a bed of ash, ice cold to the touch, as though it had lain there dormant for so many years that entropy had simply forgotten it. It clung to his body as he would rise to the distant light glimmering above him, beckoning him onward: _get up, come on, you must hurry._

It reminded him of home: the crack in the earth where the comfortable confines of his childhood met the world above, where anything could happen and nothing was certain. Every time he ascended, every time he returned to that world to do his duty for his tribe, he would round the corner into the final chamber and see the light filtering through the crack in the rock above. It would fill him with dread, even if only for a second, and that brief pulse of trepidation would render him powerless.

 _It’s all in your head,_ he lied. _The fear is nothing. You are master of your hands and you are master of what they wield. The sinew and stone are strong._ He would gird himself thusly and, reminding himself that he could face any challenge and return stronger, he would ascend the rickety wooden ladder that connected his tiny world to the greater beyond and embrace that light. 

* * *

The horizon threatened rain. 

Mole winced as the dog began to bark again, yelping at the crest of the ridge overlooking their quarry. 

“Ama, that’s enough,” Adam called at her.

Ama did not think so. She looked over at him hesitantly, as though expecting a follow-up, and when nothing came she resumed barking.

It was becoming galling. Most of the animals Mole had ever met he had ended up killing. Ama was, for now, an exception to that rule, but her howling was only amplifying the pounding sensation hammering at the front of his head. It wasn’t the pulsing pain of a headache, but something different - less painful, but more anxiety-inducing. Every unexpected sound was making him jump, and every time he and Adam talked they would devolve into an argument. 

“Ama, be quiet,” Adam said, raising his voice threateningly. He had spent most of the afternoon whittling a piece of shrubwood down to nothing. Mole observed discreetly that every time he stopped, his hands would be shaking. 

Ama grunted, pausing a minute to growl, then turned away from the ridge and flopped down into the dust and gravel, sensing her the mood of her owners. Mole was relieved to have the relative silence that followed, but the pounding did not stop. He could feel fury building up in his system with each new pulse.

He tried to focus on something familiar, something calming. His mind always went back to the cave, traversing every familiar corner and outcropping like a draft of wind blowing down from the world above. He closed his eyes and tried to become that draft, caressing the cold, slick stone as he rolled down through the tunnels towards the houses, shops, and nooks that he had known by name. 

Ama began to bark again and he was torn out of the reverie before he could even visualize the shape and size of his subterranean community. He wanted to turn around and bark back at her but it would do no good. 

“Damnit, Ama!” Adam swore, and rose quickly. He tossed the whittled wood and pocket knife he had been using into the dust, and Mole could see a small rivulet of blood running down his ring finger. Still swearing, he rushed off into the cabin to dress the wound. The tiny drops of blood that trailed behind him on the sunbaked ground were quickly joined by raindrops as the sky opened up. 

* * *

The ash clung to his body hairs and the curves of his skin and stung, transferring its callous bite onto him pitilessly. His feet sank into the ashy floor as he stumbled, uneasily, through the passageway in front of him, reaching out to the rocky walls surrounding him as he tried to walk. The jagged obsidian was unsympathetic and he could feel it cutting into his hands if he gripped the stone too tightly. His legs would begin to feel wobbly and his stomach would begin to churn like water boiling and he would always vomit, casting thin bile onto the ash where it would dry and evaporate almost instantly.

 _It’s all in your head_ , he’d lie, but the dream had just begun. 

* * *

Mole had just finishing chiseling a sconce for the torch out of the rock wall when something shifted in the tunnel behind him. His initial sense of curiosity congealed into a provocative fear when he heard something wet impact the cave floor with a splat, and felt a breeze that reeked of an acrid, sharp scent smack him in the face. Leaving the torch and his tools where they lay, he ran, wondering if he would come to regret his decision to flee.

The lack of light throughout the tunnel was not an impediment for him, but terror distracted him and he found himself nearly colliding with the cave wall multiple times as he ran towards the transit tunnel that linked the two main cave branches together. Even when he reached that tunnel, which had been expanded in the past weeks to allow a man to comfortably walk through instead of having to crawl, he could not feel secure. He stopped at the entrance to the tunnel, flanked by two weak electric hazard lamps that Adam had insisted on using, and turned around to face the darkness behind him, wondering when something would emerge. 

_Or if._

The _if_ kept him rooted in place for fifteen minutes before he realized that there was no threat. Having caught his breath and regained command of his senses he began to silently berate himself for having overreacted to what had likely been a series of natural phenomena. 

_It was a gust of foul wind_ , he argued with himself. _A wind and water falling to the floor._

His previous experience in this very same tunnel was the counterargument, but now safe from danger he could not entirely trust that his initial instinct to retreat had been correct. And now, he felt like a fool. What would Adam say?

 _Adam wouldn’t even come this far into the cave_ , Mole reminded himself. As far as excavation operations had gone, Adam had done more work on the topside logistics and setting up their lighting, doing a lot of work with “wires” that Mole had likened to the roots of a tree. Adam’s aversion to the underground was not lost on Mole. 

Feeling silly for still lending his fears credence, Mole made his way back down the tunnel from where he had come, his confidence building with every step until he reached the spot where he had been working.

His tools, as well as the stave he had been using for a torch, were gone. 

He retreated but in an orderly fashion this time, deciding that whatever had happened was a random accident. But he couldn’t shake the suspicion that these events were more connected.

 _Animals don’t steal tools_ , he thought aloud. _And there’s no humans here but us. Adam would not come this far. Logically speaking...no, there’s nothing logical about it._

He was slightly dismayed at the loss of his tools but was well aware that he could have lost more. Reaching the transit tunnel, he decided to wait and see if he could hear or smell anything moving around in the corridors beyond. Nothing came, and he left with a strange sense of dejection paired with relief.

 _Lucky again today_ , he thought. 

He found Adam near the ladders that led up to the surface, setting up yet more equipment to improve their pace of work. Though he appeared a bit anxious, vigorously scratching at his neck and chin whenever he had a free hand, he greeted Mole with a cheerful attitude.

“Well, Mole,” he said, his voice tinged with trepidation. “Find anything new down there?”

Mole lied. “No.”

* * *

His throat stinging with bile and his hands running with blood from a dozen cuts on his palm he would stagger out into this grim space and gaze out upon a shattered landscape, crafted by absurd and pernicious logics. Beyond the precipice where he stood great fingers of jagged rock stretched towards a gray-green sky, their points falling short of piercing the unearthly gloom that roiled above. The clouds, or whatever miasma they might be, rolled and shuddered with energy unbefitting of their nature, and though lightning would slice its way through the gloom, no thunder would follow. 

Nothing here followed the rules. 

And he would see the path below him, a treacherous descent of rough-hewn obsidian stone leading down towards the fragmented world below, its ashen surface rent asunder with a million cracks from which the most impenetrable darkness crept upwards, as though seeking to pollute the world above and kill the light that had awoken him. Even from where he stood, a mile above the surface below, he could see the darkness organizing and taking the form of wretched tendrils that moved with a sickening purpose - upwards, towards the only source of life, towards the only salvation he could hope for.

And he would vomit again, and it would evaporate into mist as it struck the dry stone beneath him. Nothing in this world would remain for long. 

* * *

“Ama, be quiet!”

Adam shouted, his voice hoarse after he and Mole had engaged in a bitter argument earlier. Adam was furious that Mole had somehow managed to lose three different tools. Mole had been unable to bring himself to speak the truth, and now felt like even more of a fool.

Ama kept barking, but Mole sensed that something was amiss. She was yelping as usual, yelling at nothing in particular, but he could smell something odd on the air. It was eerily familiar and reminded him of…

 _Muffalo_.

He could identify that scent anywhere, having spent nine years hunting them. He dismissed it initially as a wild animal up in the scrub and hills of the valley above them, but then the scent was joined by other smells - those of people. 

Mole turned around and he could see shapes moving down into the valley, shapes of various sizes, but they were moving slowly and non-threateningly. He determined that he and Adam were not in imminent danger, but his hackles were raised and he maintained a sense of anticipation as a couple of the shapes took on detail as they drew up into the light of their campfire. 

A man in rich-looking full-body cloth garb with a poncho draped over his shoulders and a crude helmet of unknown material on his head rode a muffalo, with two men in more ragged tribal clothes and worn-out pants escorted the creature. None of them openly bore weapons but the two escorts had daggers sheathed at their hips, and the man riding the muffalo had a long spear with a wicked curved point strapped to his back. Each of them appeared completely shaved bald, and with no facial hair to speak of. 

“Good evening,” the muffalo rider spoke, before he proceeded to dismount, assisted by his escorts. “I hope I haven’t disturbed your little gathering...too much.”

His tone was a touch haughty, with an audible undercurrent of odium, as though he found them and their encampment to be somehow offensive. 

Adam rose and stepped up to the challenge. “Can we help you with something?” Mole sat back near the cabin and kept an eye on the handful of vague figures moving around in the shadows beyond the firelight. They weren’t moving to encircle the campground or anything similarly threatening, but tolerating the presence of so many strangers was something Mole simply could not do. 

“Maybe you can, gods willing,” the muffalo rider said. “We are looking for one of our people-”

Ama began barking loudly, rushing towards the stranger and stopping only when Adam, reacting quickly, bent down and grabbed her by the scruff of her neck. Caught in the vice grip of his strange left arm, she could do nothing but bark and snap her jaws wildly. She snapped at the strangers, she snapped at the muffalo, and she snapped at Adam, most disturbingly of all.

Mole noticed the stranger’s expression twist coldly when he saw the dog, and he could feel his heart sink into his stomach. 

“Maybe you can help more than you know,” he informed them. “I would recognize that mutt anywhere.”

He stepped forward towards the baying Ama but did not reach out to her. A quick study of her features seemed to confirm his suspicions. 

“This is Go’loan’s dog,” “I wonder, how did you come by her?”

Adam was quick to speak. “We bought her off of him.”

The man pressed. “Bought her off of him, you say?”

“Yes,” Adam responded, his face slick with sweat gleaming in the dancing firelight, but his expression betraying no sign of dishonesty yet. “We traded a few things when he came to our fire asking of our whereabouts. We...bought the dog in exchange for some rations.”

The stranger smirked and shook his head disapprovingly. “Oh, my friend...that will not work on me.”

“I am not your friend,” Adam retorted.

“Go’loan would not give away an animal as well-bred as she,” the stranger continued. “Her nose is extraordinary. Her price is invaluable. Much more than-”

His face warped into a sneer.

“-a handful of rations.”

He reached towards his spear, but then hesitated, as though reconsidering a plan of action. Ama had not ceased to bark but, unable to escape Adam’s grip, had resigned herself to remaining by his side. 

“I expect you’re going to change your story now?” the stranger asked Adam.

“And what for? What do you want from us?” he replied.

“We want our man back,” the stranger said. “Alive.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”

“You’re a poor liar,” the stranger said. To Mole’s surprise, he disengaged. He turned back away and remounted his muffalo, while his escorts rejoined the animal’s side, having betrayed no signs of emotion during the brief but heated exchange. 

“We will find our man,” he promised as he gripped the reins of his muffalo tightly. “And you will be gone from here by tomorrow evening. These lands now belong to the Demigaxa. The penalty of remaining here is death. We will be back.”

He turned his beast away and the entire congregation shuffled off back into the darkness wordlessly. 

Ama was still barking. 

* * *

The dream would change from there. Sometimes he would look upon those unearthly strands of darkness running upward and, in despair at the inevitability of their ascent, cast himself off the mountain and to the surface below, to become as shattered and lifeless as it. He would wake, in a cold sweat, feeling a thousand different sensations of burning on his skin - the ash. _Icy hot_. 

Sometimes he would walk. He’d walk one way, sometimes - it would lead down. It seemed right at the time, but he would reach the surface and realize that he had no direction. He would walk on and on, feet burning in the ash below as he marched through a fugue world, until he could feel his body start to crumble and become ash itself. He would fall to the ground, scream in agony as he burned alive, then become atomized, his very fabric dissipating. 

Sometimes, he would find a way to go up. He’d slowly rise towards the light, climbing a path leading him upwards. He would ascend the mountains and find his way to their jagged peaks but find them lacking. The light would pulsate and throb, as if reminding him - _you must hurry! I can be reached!_

But it would never come to meet him, damnit! He would descend and ascend, descend and ascend again, and never reach it. The miasma churning above seemed to almost taunt him, its rumbling taking on the aspect of mocking laughter. The darkness rising from the fissures miles below him would grow imperceptibly closer, and he could feel horror rising with the bile in his throat, and he would scream. 

Then he would wake. 

* * *

Mole had barely slept. The dream had seemed so real, and when he had awoken screaming and soaked in sweat, he remembered what the stranger had said. It hit him like a punch to the gut and he could sleep no more.

He sat tending the fire as the sun rose over the mountain peaks, dispersing the tolerable mild temperature of the night and promising heat and dehydration. He thought of absconding up into the foothills to try and scout around, but he decided to wait for Adam to wake up to plan a course of action.

Ama began barking not long after sunrise and Adam was up not long after. Though clearly bedraggled and at his wit’s end with the animal, he could not bring himself to say anything to her as she began baying at nothing in particular again. He sat down by the campfire with Mole.

“My head…” he groaned, and touched his forehead. Mole knew what it was. _The pulse_. He could feel it too, though somewhat diminished right now. 

“They’ll be back tonight,” Mole said. 

“I know,” Adam replied. “My head...I need water.”

On shaky legs, he rose and made his way over to their water pot. What little was left he gulped down, then returned, his legs still shaking. 

“We can’t stay here,” Mole said.   
“We can’t leave,” Adam retorted. 

“Then what do you want?” Mole’s voice rose. 

“I want to live,” Adam growled. “For fuck’s sake...the barking…”

“We shouldn’t have taken the creature,” Mole said.

Adam shrugged, massaging the bridge of his nose with two knuckles. “Little late for that.”

Mole bit his lip and began to try and summon a plan. Being a tracker, he could get the lay of the terrain and find a way out of the valley before dark, though they might not be able to get far enough.

“I can try and lead us out,” Mole suggested. “I have-”

“We can’t leave,” Adam said, grimacing. “They’ll kill us.”

Mole had forgotten. _Then we’re dead either way_ , he thought _._ But Adam was not about to give up just yet. “The radio.”

“What?” 

“Radio,” Adam said. Mole was clearly ignorant of the word and tried to sound it out in his head, but Adam was already up and moving again, stumbling a bit as he struggled to keep his balance.

“We can call the people,” Adam said as he stumbled into the cabin. “Our people. What’s his name. The lieutenant. Fuck, what’s his name?” He was speaking to nobody in particular but Mole did not call out to him or interrupt him. He was on to something. 

Adam rustled around in the cabin a bit while Mole stirred the fire, and returned with a slim brown box with an odd stick-looking device protruding from its top. Mole’s exposure to the technology of the thunder-men and the sky peoples had been limited, but he understood that this creation was one of theirs, like the electric lights Adam had set up or the whirring, biting tools he sometimes used to dig. Mole did not like them, but they did get the job done faster than the hand tools he was accustomed to. 

Adam handed him the strange device. “Here, take this,” he said, and rushed back inside the cabin. Mole did as told but felt uncomfortable with it in his hands. It was rectangular in shape, cold to the touch and unpleasant in texture, and there were several protruding bits on the bottom that bounded two large circular drum-like mounds that were surprisingly soft. Adam returned before Mole could consider fiddling with it, hauling out a larger box with several “wires” running out of it, splayed out on the ground behind Adam as he dragged it out.

“What’s your plan?” Mole asked. 

“Set this up. Get a signal. Call our people. We can get help,” Adam said. “Have you seen one of these before?”

Mole shook his head. Peculiarly, he noticed with a bit of dismay, he was not at all hungry. His appetite had vanished ever since the events of last night. 

“Well, basically,” Adam began, as he struggled to attempt to explain the technology, “it allows us to talk to people at a great distance. We can talk to the...Lieutenant. Lieutenant Tuzel. Our site overseer.”

Mole nodded, but the concept seemed impossible to him. How could someone speak and yet be heard a mile away, much less hundreds? No man alive could shout and be heard at that range. He would have to see how the thing worked. They had not received news from their overseer in two weeks, and that had not even been a visit - just supplies dropped off for them on the ridge, with a note: _keep on digging_. 

Adam took some time fiddling with the technology and pulling strange-looking parts out and connecting the wires to various holes, but after about half an hour he let out an excited yelp. “Done!” he cried, and began fiddling with gray circular protrusions on the bottom of the larger box. The piece of equipment made a strange whirring sound, one unlike Mole had not heard before. 

_No doubt, the elders would have considered this a threat_ , he thought, with a sharp pang of nostalgia. _If they could see me now, trusting it, what would they say?_

“Okay. I think I have the signal,” Adam said, and held the smaller rectangular box up to his ear. “Now, let’s hope someone is listening…”

 _Are you sure you can trust him_? A nagging voice in the back of his head attempted to spoil the moment, but Adam quickly found what he was looking for, or at least Mole assumed so, because he began to talk excitedly. 

“Lieutenant Tuzel! Is this Lieutenant Tuzel!?...no??...can you get...can you get him for me? Please...please get him for me, this is X-16...urgent message for him, yes-”

Mole wondered with passing amusement if Adam was faking a conversation as part of an elaborate plot to trick him. _Smart thunder-man tricks dumb undergrounder with his metal box_ , he thought sarcastically. But their situation was too urgent, and both men were too endangered for such mischief. Adam waited for about a minute before he resumed the conversation.

“Yes...Lieutenant Tuzel, this is Adam, X-16...yes, I have urgent news to report...of course, it’s...no, no...yes, we have been digging...no, it’s not about that...no, but it’s urgent!” He began to explain their predicament hurriedly. Admirably, he left out no details, admitting that they had killed a man. 

_Well. I killed a man._ It was not the first man Mole had killed, but it was never a sensation that he could get over. Every time, it felt like he was growing a little emptier, though he would never speak of it to anyone. 

“Okay...are you sure?...I don’t know if we can...no, I don’t know if we can! Look, we’re just two men! They’re...no, I don’t know how many there are. They promised to come back with more...what? Well...fuck, okay.”

Adam stopped, and the machine clicked. He put down the rectangular box with a dejected look on his face, and Mole could immediately tell that something had not gone right. 

“You spoke with him?” Mole asked hesitantly.

“Yes,” Adam said, spreading his legs and cupping his hands against his mouth. “Not what I was hoping for.”

“Can they help us?” 

“They can.” 

“But?”

“They need time,” Adam said. “They can’t be here until tomorrow at the latest. And by then-”

Adam did not need to say anything more. They both knew what that meant. Help would not come in time to save them; there would be no salvation coming. 

* * *

That night he dreamed the same dream again. But things seemed to line up this time, in a way they hadn’t before. He arose in the dream with a fresh sense of purpose, and motivation he hadn’t had before.

He felt invigorated as he stepped out onto his precipice and surveyed the blasted landscape below, its fissures issuing up darkness like steam. The darkness sensed him, and moved with purpose, but he too could move with purpose, for the path before him this time was clear. 

He ascended. Nothing here would follow the rules, nothing here was certain, except _him_ . He was certain that he was doing everything right, and as he ascended the mountain peak that he knew would be the one, he could feel exhilaration spread through his body like the ecstasy of climax. He had finally done it, he could achieve escape - no, _salvation_ \- and leave this body and this world behind. He could be free and safe and most of all _accomplished_ , having done IT. IT. He did it! IT.

He could feel the light above him. It burned with a heat he knew all too well, as he had trudged across sun-baked plains so many times before during the hunt. But he welcomed it, for he had done IT. And he reached out to it as he could feel it searing his fingertips, and it opened up for him, for _him_!

But as he looked onto the images of salvation that came to him from the other side he felt his body go cold. Nothing was right - no, this wasn’t right! His eyes gazed upon a space that had no end nor beginning, with structures of impossible geometry, textured with colors that shifted between every hue with relentless fervor.

And he screamed, for this was no salvation. 

No...there was no salvation.


	5. Adam - 3

Adam could not believe that salvation was a mere day away, but it would not come soon enough. Lt. Tuzel had been as supportive as possible, promising to bring anything that the encampment might require - troops, firearms, explosives, sound and light, whatever they could use to drive off the tribals. But he couldn’t bring it  _ now _ , and that made all the difference.

_ There’s no way to spin this. We’re going to be fucked _ , he thought, as he sullenly tended the boiling pot of water over the fire and dumped the small chunks of thawed celery and carrots in. There were two of them, and who knows how many of the tribals. Even with weapons, they would have a difficult time defending their position in the quarry. Unarmed as they were (a pocket knife and some hand tools did not count for much in such a situation), they were out of options. 

Adam let the stew simmer but didn’t feel any appetite. The pounding in his forehead had relented somewhat but the lack of sleep combined with the growing heat was making him feel ill and uneasy. His eyes kept wandering up to the ridgeline overlooking their campsite, but nobody could be seen up there. For most of the morning, they remained alone and unmolested.

Around noon, the heat was becoming unbearable, and Mole began to grow agitated, wanting to go into the caves to work. Adam heard his protests but shook his head sullenly and disagreed. 

“I need you here,” he argued. “We should both stay here.” The pounding in his head was becoming amplified with the heat. It pained him, and made him grow frustrated, and he could feel the tension spreading across his face and down his jaw. 

“It’s hot here. Cool down there. I want to work. And maybe they were bluffing,” Mole said in return. 

“Do you really think they were bluffing?” Adam asked. 

Mole was preparing to retort, but his attempt was interrupted. His expression evolved from one of irritation to one of concern and his eyes leapt over Adam’s shoulder, gazing upwards towards the ridgeline. Adam turned around with a sinking sensation in his stomach as Ama, sitting next to the cabin’s stoop, rose to her feet and began barking ferociously.

At least two dozen of the tribesmen were descending the rocky, gravel-strewn incline that separated their quarry space from the hills above. One of them rode on a muffalo, not unlike their primary visitor last night, and the others were openly armed with an assortment of polearms, the likes of which made Adam’s stomach tighten into a knot of Gordian proportions. 

_ This is it _ , he began mentally preparing himself, as Ama yelped fervently.  _ This is the end _ . Burkay and his men would come tonight and find nothing more than a couple of mutilated corpses, a destroyed cabin, and blood-slicked stone. 

“Mole, how good are you at fighting?” Adam asked, feeling his throat tightening and strangling his speech.

“Not good enough,” Mole replied. 

The muffalo-mounted man approached their campsite as the armed tribals fanned out in a crescent formation, surrounding their campsite and cutting off access to the only escape route that didn’t lead into the caves. Mole reached down for a stave of firewood at the corner of their cabin but Adam hesitated. Their weapons were drawn but once they each reached their spots in the semi-circle formation, they didn’t move. Only the muffalo mount and an attendant moved towards their campfire. 

In contrast to yesterday’s visitor, the man on the muffalo before them was dressed gaily, regaled in colorful yellow and orange sashes and sweeping red pants, and wearing a metal piece of headgear decorated with small green stones and chunks of gleaming quartz. He was unarmed, but given the fact that everyone else around them was well-armed and appeared ready to jump at a moment’s notice, Adam did not want to take any risks. 

_ Besides, this may yet end up in our favor _ , he thought. At least, he wanted to think that was possible. 

The man did not dismount to greet them this time. He pulled his beast up to the campfire and looked down at the two of them, grimacing as though disgusted. 

“So you are the occupiers of my land,” he said after about fifteen awkward seconds of visually scouring them and their site. “You’ve been informed of this just as well.”

“Who are you?” Adam asked. 

The man snorted disapprovingly. “Your ignorance is irritating. I am Odo Calibrosa,” he said, with a flourish of his free arm, “first of his name, Spear-breaker, Master of the Hunt, and Chief of the Demigaxa.” The attendant bowed his head in apparent reverence when he finished his sweeping statement. 

“You are on land claimed by the Demigaxa. If you fail to leave by force of words you will be stormed by force of arms,” he informed them after his introduction. “What say you?”

“We will not leave,” Adam informed him, as forcefully as he could muster. His legs were feeling weak and his stomach was rolling within his gut but Mole remained silent and he needed to try and score them a win. 

“Then you will die,” Odo informed him candidly.

“We  _ can’t _ leave,” Adam emphasized. “Is there no way to talk this out?”

Odo scoffed. “We do not talk this way,” he informed Adam coldly. “For we are people of action. So you will not leave? Then we must kill you. It’s the only way.”

The armed men began moving in threateningly as he raised a braced fist towards the sky. Adam had to act, and fast. Talking was clearly out of the question now. These were not a people who accepted diplomacy, though they might understand its value; they simply placed value on another form of dealing. So Adam had to adapt to their expectations, and he did so in a split-second decision as spearpoints lowered threateningly at him and Mole raised his stave for a fight. 

“Wait. Stop.” He looked Odo Calibrosa in the eye, maintaining a submissive stance but speaking with determination. His request had the desired effect, as Odo Calibrosa narrowed his eyes suspiciously but raised his fist again, bringing his soldiers to a halt, merely ten paces away from Adam and Mole. 

“This can be resolved without the bloodshed of your people, or my friend here,” Adam said. 

“My people are eager to shed their blood for my cause,” Odo said.    
“I challenge you to personal combat,” Adam dared him, then decided to add a caveat. “Unarmed.”

Odo’s aspect of concern turned into a wicked grin. He even snickered mildly from his position overlooking Adam. 

“You are so bold, to think you can defeat someone as imposing as me in single combat?” he challenged. Adam decided to play it safe, but maintain the dare.

“I do not,” Adam said. “But I am willing to risk it anyway.”

That seemed to be enough to assuage the chieftain’s ego, as he settled back into his mount somewhat, seeming quite satisfied at this new challenge.

“I applaud your bravery, though you are foolish,” he said. “I accept your challenge. We will return for you tonight.”

Adam wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but his ploy was not foolproof.  _ There may yet be room for error _ . Odo Calibrosa, of course, did not know any better, thinking he had already won the duel judging by his expression. He waved at his soldiers, who began falling back into formation as the gathering departed their campsite, heading back up the incline towards the ridgeline above. Adam’s heart was pounding. 

“You sure about this?”

Mole, behind him, had not yet dropped his stave, an expression of concern mixed with hope on his face. Adam could already tell what he was thinking.

_ Maybe this will work. But I don’t know. _

“Not entirely,” Adam said sincerely. “But...what other choice did we have?”

“I would rather die on my feet fighting with you than...whatever the other option is,” Mole said.

That was surprisingly heartwarming coming from Mole, but Adam did not quite know how to respond, so he ignored it for the time being. Feeling the unpleasant warmth in the pit of his stomach begin expanding, and sweat pouring down the back of his neck, he had to take a seat at the firepit and think. Mole, too, sat.

“You think your gift is enough?” Mole asked.

Adam was confused. “My gift?”

Mole pointed at his left arm. “Your gift. Your arm. Some kind of thunder-man gift?”

“Oh. Ah, sort of,” Adam said. “Why do you call us thunder-men?”

“The weapons you use,” Mole said plainly. “It is as though you can summon thunder...though I know that is not the case.”

_ Guns. He’s talking about guns.  _ Adam felt stupid, but understood that the gulf between their lived experiences could not be bridged in the span of weeks, maybe not even months. Some confusion was to be expected.

“It wasn’t a gift, really,” Adam said. “Well, it was a gift for myself.”

“I wish I understood it,” Mole said, frowning. “It all seems like magic. But I don’t believe it. But how else can I explain it?”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t quite know how to explain it. It’s one of those things that just is.”

“Just is,” Mole echoed. “Yeah. It is.”

Adam didn’t know much about it either. The doctor had explained everything prior to him signing on to the procedure and the surgeon had quite a bit to say before and after the operation, but all he knew was that the wiring and circuits inside empowered him in a way that flesh never did. Bionics were incredibly expensive even in their simplest form, but Adam had saved up for it, knowing how worthwhile it would be. 

“Have you ever fought before?” Mole inquired as Adam subconsciously rubbed the bionic arm. The replacement of warm flesh with cold synthylene had been difficult to get used to at first, but a copious amount of drinking and several months had rendered this into a new normal. 

“Yes,” Adam replied. “Well...how do you define fighting?”

“Back in my tribe, we would spar as youth,” Mole said. “With fists, but...more gentle. Teach us how to survive. Teach us how to manage our strength.”

“Ah, not like that. A bit more rugged,” Adam said. As a bouncer, he had seen his share of street fights. Most of them had involved dopey drunks who could slug hard but barely aimed, but more than a few had involved more nefarious individuals who were quicker on their toes. Adam had a few scars on his shoulder from fights where someone had pulled a viblade before they were inevitably subdued. 

“This will be a difficult fight,” warned Mole. “Even if you are prepared.”

“No doubt,” Adam admitted, “but what other choice do we have?”

Mole’s silence betrayed the answer. They didn’t have one. 

* * *

Day passed into dusk and Adam could not help but feel anxious. He ate lightly and spoke little, and was continually aware of the fact that they were being watched. It was never intrusive, but it wasn’t subtle either; throughout the day at least two men at a time sat up on the ridgeline, keeping eyes on the campsite. 

_ It’s not like we’re going to go anywhere _ , Adam wanted to tell them.  _ Where would we go?  _

He couldn’t keep much food down. In spite of his clandestine advantage in the upcoming duel, he was still nervous. It had been months since his last real brawl, and even then he had his coworkers to count on. Now, he was on his own, and would be operating in “enemy territory” no less.

His stomach churned again. Mole had been silent for the past two hours. Ama barked periodically, but the heat had subdued her mostly, something that Adam was silently thankful for. An earlier attempt at hailing Burkay had met nothing but static, and they had both grown frustrated at the lack of information. He needed to keep his head clear and try to subdue the throbbing sensation at the front of his skull that had decided to return to near full-force again, and trying to call for help repeatedly was only going to make him feel worse.

“Adam. They’re here again,” Mole spoke up. 

Adam turned around and saw a much smaller procession than previously descending the incline. They were all still armed, but he was at least relieved to know that they wouldn’t be coming to kill him.

_ That comes later _ , a treacherous voice in his head informed him. The fact that a part of his brain was assured of his defeat made him clench his fists and grit his teeth. He would not give in to that.

“Odo Calibrosa, first of his name, Spear-breaker, Master of the Hunt, and Chief of the Demigaxa, requests your presence,” the leader of the armed party announced as they drew up near the campfire, their faces barely illuminated in the dying light by the crackling flames. “As you have promised.”

Adam nodded his assent and rose, but Mole did so as well.

“I come with,” Mole said. “Our fates are intertwined.”

_ No, you idiot,  _ Adam wanted to tell him.  _ Don’t do this. You might have a chance yet.  _ But he could tell that Mole was only going to be obstinate. What he said earlier came back to haunt Adam, and he could only motion for Mole to follow as he joined the party of armed men and departed, leaving Ama behind to bark and struggle with the chain and collar that kept her rooted to the cabin. 

They walked on in silence, the way lit by two torches and the dying light of sundown. The sounds and smells of the nearby camp became apparent quickly, and try as he might Adam could not identify most of them. His head hurt, but he pressed on silently, figuring that complaining would do him no good. 

The Demigaxa camp sprawled across a bowl-shaped valley about a half mile from the X-16 site where the cabin was, nestled up against the rugged face of a mountain and visibly teeming with activity even from a distance. With his limited ability to discern individual shapes from afar, Adam had to guess that there must be at least two hundred people in the camp judging by the number of tents. Amid the more exotic scents of unfamiliar spices and mouth-watering meals, he could smell the familiar reek of manure and human waste. 

“You stay with us until we get to the square. You will hear from Odo Calibrosa, first of his name, Spear-breaker, Master of the Hunt, and Chief of the Demigaxa, and then you will fight,” one of the escorts informed him as they descended a smooth natural incline of packed earth and clay down to the camp. Boys and girls of younger ages were cleaning clothes and gathering water from a small ground spring on the outside of the camp, and a not insignificant number of them gawked in astonishment as Adam and Mole, dressed in the clothing of “thunder-men”, walked by them and into the camp.

_ How wonderful ignorance must be _ , Adam thought dismissively. The throbbing in his head was amplified by the noise and it was infuriating. He wanted to shout derisively at every single motherfucking primitive who gaped at him with open mouths and wide eyes, he wanted to silence their babbling and make them cower before him, and if only he had a…

_ A gun.  _ Burkay would have a gun. But he might still be hours out. Night was falling, but there had been no sign of him. 

Dogs lashed to the stakes of tents barked and growled at them as they passed by. They were all mangy-looking mutt types, straining at their leashes as the strangers passed. Demigaxa people amid the tents stared and pointed as the strangers passed by but none of them interfered, perhaps too fearful of the escorts flanking them, or perhaps because they had some dignity in the way that they treated outsiders. If he were in a better mood and in less pain, Adam might give them the benefit of the doubt. As is, he just assumed that they were a congregation of uncivilized worms that he would have to come back and destroy once Burkay arrived.

_ Like that will happen.  _ His internal monologue was becoming increasingly grim. As they walked past one tent, they could hear the sounds of someone screaming in pain from inside of it, and begging to be released. It only made Adam less optimistic about the outcome of this fight.

_ Say you yield and they let you live, only to lop your balls off and feed them to you _ , his internal monologue hypothesized.  _ How do you think that would feel _ ?

Adam grit his teeth and nearly bit his tongue as they came across more dogs who yelled at him madly, trying to get out of their leashes and get at him. He wished he had an ibuprofen, or something similar, something that could ease the pounding…

The square in the center of the camp was ringed with crude miniature totems, makeshift barbed wire fencing that was really just brambles scavenged from the surrounding scrub, and chalk outlines designating what he assumed were starting positions and boundaries. 

“In you go,” one of the Demigaxa said, prodding Adam into the ring.

“Not you,” said another, holding Mole back. Mole was relegated to the role of spectator, standing at the sidelines helplessly as children peered out from tents behind him and stared wide-eyed at him. 

Adam stood in the ring as a dozen voices called out to him, taunting him. 

“Thunder-man, thunder-man!”

“No thunder for you, cloudwalker!”

“Bleed for us, bleed!”

“Look, look, look!”

His ears rang with the taunts but it was all soon drowned out by a wave of pain in his head that roared into his frontal lobe and dashed itself against the brim of his skull, as though attempting to smash through, and by doing so releasing itself upon the world. He winced in pain but would not show weakness - not now, not that Odo Calibrosa was stepping into the ring.

Bedecked in only garish orange pants and a thick leather belt with gold embossment, Odo Calibrosa’s muscular, rugged body had been painted with the hand of a madman. A plethora of gaudy colors swirled across his torso and ran along his ribs and sternum, intermingling with one another haphazardly. His face was painted in a similar fashion, but with his eyes explicitly accented by jet black paint, a deliberate touch in a sea of randomness. He stepped into the ring and smiled broadly at Adam. Adam noticed that at least three of his teeth were seriously chipped. 

_ Battle scars from past matches. He’s experienced. Are you up for it?  _

Enough of the voice. Enough of that fucking voice. No more. Adam cracked the knuckles on his right hand and tapped his left, his fingers drumming the synthylene surface promisingly. 

“People of the Demigaxa!” Odo Calibrosa roared, raising his fists triumphantly to a chorus of hoots and cheers from the spectators and the sounds of spears rattling from the warriors. “I stand before you again, painted as vibrant as the spirits of the air, to bring you yet another victory! As I have done before, as you have seen, I will do again!”

He spread his arms wide again and then did a somersault, to wild cheers and a chorus of applause from the assembly.

“I, Odo Calibrosa,” he began, “the one who hunts the boar and mounts the whore, the living fist of this earthly tribe, the one who mastered the spear and the silk and whose virtues are sung by all the elements in harmony, will give you this! Victory!”

Another round of cheers followed that. Adam realized that the previous voice in his head, the one that had been promising defeat and had been speculating about all the scenarios that might follow, had been replaced with a new, simpler one. 

_ Fight back. Hurt him. Do it. Hurt him good.  _

He bit his lip so hard that he pierced the skin. He tasted blood but it didn’t bother him. 

“I have promised you this land, as I have promised a hundred times before!” Odo Calibrosa roared. “The price is blood. And so blood I will shed!”

He lowered an arm and pointed a finger at Adam, his eyes growing wide as the crowd energized him. 

_ Break him over your knee. Make him wail for you. Hurt him.  _

The voice was not his own, he realized with a jolt of terror. This was foreign. This wasn’t him.

“Tonight we fight. One against one. Only one walks out. The Door Beyond awaits the other!” Odo Calibrosa exclaimed. “Tonight I win for you, my people. Tonight, I win for the Demigaxa!”

The assembly hooted and howled and threw curses and oaths at Adam as Odo Calibrosa thumped his chest and raised his fists into a stance of readiness, his eyes locked firmly on Adam’s.

_ Kill him. Kill kill kill. Kill kill kill kill- _

Adam did not wait for a signal. He lunged at Odo Calibrosa and, in his pain-induced fury, forgot to throw his jab. He crossed with his right and took the chieftain by surprise, but only managed to knock him briefly off balance, missing his jaw and impacting the meat of his neck. Odo grimaced but then quickly regained his footing and returned the favor. Adam felt knuckle and muscle connect with the side of his face and then a second later with his nose, and stumbled backwards, his arms falling to his sides as his vision began to swim.

_ Hit. Hurt. Kill.  _

Odo Calibrosa moved to take the wind out of him with a low hook but Adam sidestepped it in the knick of time and lashed out with his right hook again, since the chieftain was to his right and a jab would seem ineffective. It caught Odo in the shoulder but the connection was poor and Odo instead spun around and lashed out furiously with a backfist before multiple jabs. Adam caught everything and reeled, his head spinning and his breathing rapidly intensifying.

_ Kill kill kill kill _ , the voice in his head urged, seemingly unaware of his current situation and the fact that he was now firmly on the defensive. He managed to deflect a few light probing jabs but couldn’t get off an attack of his own, and when he took a roundhouse to the ribs he felt air rush out of his system and he stumbled backwards into a set of brambles. He could barely feel them jab him in the back, so hyperfocused was he on making sure that Odo couldn’t pin him down and finish him. 

It was pure luck that he didn’t dodge the haymaker. Odo Calibrosa, sensing his opponent’s weakness, prepared himself to ground him, and then get down into the dirt to perform the bloody business of beating him to death. But Adam instinctively lashed out with his left arm and caught the haymaker mid swing. He could feel the energy ripple through his shoulder like fire, but he was unmoved. 

The bionics were more powerful than Odo Calibrosa could ever hope to be. He attempted to free his arm, but Adam’s grip was iron. For the first time since meeting him, Adam looked into the chieftain’s eyes and he could see fear. Now, he knew what the voice would tell him to do.

He released the arm and then threw a jab that audibly shattered Odo Calibrosa’s jaw.

The chief reeled back, howling in pain, his tongue flapping out of his mouth with wild abandon and degrading his speech to that of an animal. Gurgling and howling madly, he flailed at Adam with wild abandon, but Adam sidestepped and delivered another jab to the chieftain’s face. Something gave, and Adam did it again. Something else gave. Blood fountained into the air from an open wound as he punched again, and this time Odo Calibrosa fell to the ground, his legs thrashing wildly in a desperate attempt to get back up. Adam would not let it happen.

Even the voice urging him to kill was drowned out as blood pounded in his ears. He delivered one blow, then another, using only his left hand. Odo Calibrosa ceased to struggle after several seconds as the skin on his face dissolved into mush and every bone cracked under the pressure. He grew still and it was only then that Adam realized that his face had been speckled with his opponent’s blood, hot even on his warm skin. 

The crowd had gone completely silent. Even the children were quiet. Nobody cheered. Adam rose and, his pulse pounding, pointed at a random face in the crowd and addressed it.

“I am Adam Adagimyan. I shed blood tonight. I paid the price.”

He turned on his heel and pointed to another face. Like the previous one, it expressed pure fear.

“I paid the price, and now I go home. Who here will stop me!?”

No one, not even the warriors, met his challenge. The common folk appeared nothing short of aghast, staring in horror at him as though he were a sign of the end times. The warriors were more reserved but had visibly become sullen and unnerved, grasping their spears with whitening knuckles and staring at him with perceptible anxiety. 

“Mole,” Adam called out, wiping some of the blood from his face with the back of his bionic hand and stepping over Odo Calibrosa’s body. Mole’s face appeared in the crowd. “We’re going home.”

Nobody moved to stop them at first, but then someone called out for them to halt. Adam turned around, expecting a fight, but a demure-looking man in rather drab clothes stepped into the arena. 

“You must not leave yet,” he informed Adam, his voice wavering as his eyes drifted over to his slain leader’s battered corpse. “Tradition...tradition demands that whoever kills the chieftain of the Demigaxa receives his most valued possessions.”

A few of the warriors nodded their heads solemnly. Adam turned towards the demure man and approached him. The voice returned and demanded that he kill, but he suppressed it. It was not him. 

“I don’t want anything,” he said. “I want to go home.”

“Tradition...demands it,” the demure man said, his voice cracking. “The Demigaxa bury their leader now, but he cannot take everything with him to the other side. Not when one stands victorious over his slain form.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You must take it or we will burn it all with his body. The slave included.”

Adam’s third refusal was cut off. He bit his tongue.  _ A slave.  _ The chieftain had a slave. And they were going to...no, that could not be so. Adam did not want the trinkets and baubles of a dead man’s personal collection, but he could not let an innocent human being die in that way. He could not.

“A slave?” Adam asked, as if to confirm.

“Odo Calibrosa, first of his name, Spear-breaker, Master of the-”

“He’s dead. Get to your point.”   
“-he...had a slave to his name. A youth who served him the mead and bathed him. He is among the possessions. You must take him, or he will burn with everything else. Tradition demands it.” The demure man was not making a very convincing argument overall, but Adam would not let an innocent man die. 

“Give me the slave. Burn the rest. Or whatever you want,” he said, with a lazy flourish of his hand. The demure man bowed his head and disappeared into the crowd briefly, returning with a scrawny youth, clothed only in a tribal kilt and basic undergarments that barely clothed his groin. He presented the youth hurriedly.

“As requested. As for the rest-”

“I told you, burn it,” Adam demanded, growing incensed. “I don’t want it. Burn it with your chieftain, and move on with your lives.”

The demure man understood, and nodded his head while pushing the youth forward, as if to say  _ begone, you’re no longer ours.  _ The young man appeared uncertain about what lay ahead, but he could taste freedom, and so moved to Adam’s side, playing with the thick rope collar around his neck as he did so. Adam had every intention of liberating him from the confines of that collar, but wasn’t sure what to do next. 

_ We’ll get there when we get there. _

The mood in the camp was changing. He could feel the atmosphere growing tense as the crowd began to recover from the shock of seeing their esteemed leader die a bloody, ignominious death at the hands of a nobody. The warriors, though still sullen, were muttering among themselves as Mole and Adam began to clear a path through the crowd, and peoples’ fear was now turning to hate. Adam could see it in their eyes.

_ Best be off now,  _ he thought, a rational voice returning. He was relieved to hear his own voice in his head, and not that of alien violence. The pounding in his head was now gone, too. 

“I guess you really can fight,” Mole said as they made their way back out of the camp. The people were silent, shooting daggers at them as they passed, but the dogs began barking again. Adam, now back to his normal self, could safely ignore them. 

“Call it luck, perhaps,” Adam said, though he found himself smirking. The Demigaxa were none the wiser to the fact that he had essentially cheated. 

“Luck. Yes,” Mole agreed, as he did not understand it either. Adam alone knew the full truth about the events of this night and why they had transpired the way they did, and he took some perverse pride in that.

From behind him, a lone taunt rang out from some anonymous member of the tribe. “Thunder-man!” 

Adam ignored it.

* * *

Adam was trying to encourage their recently liberated “slave” to speak to them when a familiar roar began to pound his ears and the sound of air rushing sharply over something came to him. He could not see anything above him on account of the darkness, but he knew that Burkay and backup had just arrived.

_ Excellent timing _ , he mused to himself. He would, of course, not say anything snarky to his handlers. He was still well aware of his status in their eyes and could easily be disposed of if he said the wrong thing. 

Several bright lights shot to life just at the top of their quarry’s incline, where the aerodynamic metal shell of the dropship was vaguely illuminated by the external floodlights that marked the drop zone. The back hatch opened and several figures spilled out, visibly armored and armed up even at a distance. It was only when they had swept the ridgeline and realized there was no immediate threat that they seemed to relax and a few of them descended the incline into the quarry. 

“Well it seems that your threat has up and vanished, gentlemen,” Tuzel said as he approached their campfire flanked by a few of his armed men, looking alert for trouble. “Or, at least, it’s quite subdued.”

“You saw their camp, right?” Adam asked.

Tuzel nodded. “Yes, yes. It’s over there, alright. But they seem quite subdued, as I said. What happened?”

It was Mole who spoke up on Adam’s behalf now, as if he wanted to verify whatever Adam’s story was going to be.

“Adam killed their leader in a fight,” Mole said. “Got the best of them. Made them scared.”

Tuzel turned his head from Mole back to Adam. “Is this true?”

“True.”

“Well,” Tuzel said, his eyes lighting up with genuine surprise. “Guess I had better watch my back around you, huh?”

He chuckled, but Adam did not feel like joining in on the laughter. He didn’t find it particularly funny, though he was glad that the Lieutenant believed their story. It would have perhaps seemed more outlandish, Adam realized, if he had washed his left hand thoroughly - alas, it was still speckled with dried blood and bits of gore that were very visible to Tuzel’s eye. 

“Well, killer, since it looks like you’ve still got company, we may hold down the fort here tonight with you,” Tuzel informed them. “I’ve set two of my men to firewatch on their camp, but I don’t think they’ll do much.”

“Well, we appreciate it,”

“Find anything of value yet?”

Adam shook his head. They would’ve reported gold or silver if they’d found it, but for all their efforts in expanding the previous tunnels that the survey team had initially dug out, they’d only found a muddled vein of gypsum that would be useful for little more than fertilizer. 

“Well, you have all the time in the world, I suppose,” “Found anything else of interest?”

Adam noticed that Mole perked up suddenly, but then cast his eyes back into the fire, avoiding Tuzel’s gaze.  _ He has something to say, but doesn’t want to say it. _

“No,” Adam replied. “No bugs, neither. Really not much at all.”

“Hmm. Well then,” Tuzel said aloud, with no further explication on his thoughts. Adam realized that he may have just cursed himself and Mole to an early grave by revealing how devoid of resources their site appeared to be, but Tuzel turned his back on them and began to walk off.

“You gentlemen have a good night. I’ll check up on you in the morning,” he said, and whistled to his team to follow back up to the dropship. Ama, who had been sleeping, began to furiously kick her hind legs into the gravel beneath her, growling in her sleep.

“She has nightmares too,” Mole noted.   
“What were you going to say to him?”

“Hmm?”

“You were going to tell him something,” Adam said. “Weren’t you?”

Mole avoided looking into Adam’s eyes. “It’s not important.”

“Mole. Come on. We’ve been here for how many weeks,” Adam said, hearing the concern in his own voice. “You know as well as I, something’s wrong here.”

“I don’t know how to say it,” Mole admitted sheepishly.

“Sleep on it, then,” Adam suggested. “You may regret not speaking up.”

He departed for the cabin for what was, in his opinion, a well-earned rest. His head had begun throbbing again. 


	6. Mole - 3

Mole awoke to the sounds of Ama barking hoarsely and someone else screaming in pain. Terrified of what the situation outside might have devolved into, he threw on his work jeans and rushed out, as Adam awoke with a start to the din from outside the cabin. 

Mole had barely made it out the door when something muscular dashed in front of him, nearly bowling him over. He barely had time to recover before Ama was gone. In the fading firelight, he could make out the remains of her leash, chewed down to frayed ends, and pawprints in the dirt leading off towards the incline. There was no other sign of her.

The slave boy was the one who was screaming, though Ama apparently had not bothered him at all. Wrapped up in the bedroll that he had been given and laying half outside of the tent they had provided for him, he was screaming and thrashing about, shouting barely discernible words and audibly in pain. 

Mole, having no other recourse, ran over to him and kicked him, hard. 

The boy woke up with a shout but then fell silent as he got his bearings on the waking world. His eyes flailed about wildly before finally settling on Mole’s face, and he began to grow red with embarrassment.

“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to hurt you. Just making sure you’re good,” Mole promised.

The youth shook his head vigorously. 

_ I cannot blame you _ , Mole thought. He himself had woken up from a nightmare again, though this was one he had grown somewhat familiar with. The ashen skies and festering crags and craggy, foreboding mountains of the dream had become so customary that the fearful impacts had grown somewhat diminished. 

“Are we good out here?” Adam called from the stoop of the cabin. “Where the fuck did Ama go?”

“Ran off,” Mole reported, as he let the youth slide back into his tent. “Chewed through her own leash.”

“Goddamn,” Adam swore, shining a portable lamp onto the spot where she had been laying. Rivulets of blood around the chewed ends of rope suggested that her struggle with it had not been easy. 

“She wanted to go. Badly,” Mole said. 

“No shit,” Adam swore again. “I didn’t think...she could do that.”

“Desperation,” Mole said. 

“Well,” said Adam, “no use in getting back to sleep. You hungry?”

Mole shook his head. “Not particularly.”

“Might do good to cook something up anyway.” 

Adam went through the motions as he put together a simple stew over the fire but was visibly lethargic, and when he finished he only filled about a quarter of a tin and chipped away at it slowly. They sat in silence as the sun began to rise, dispersing the gloom of night that somehow felt more oppressive than previous nights. 

“You ought to talk to Burkay today, before he leaves,” Adam spoke up after the period of silence. “If not you, then I will.”

“You should,” Mole said. He couldn’t trust that his tongue would impart the details of their situation properly. 

“I don’t know if he’ll take to it,” Adam said. “He may just decide we’re a liability and...well, you know.”

Mole nodded.  _ I know _ . The ways of the thunder-men were strange to him but even he could understand what would happen once they were no longer useful to their handlers. It would mean he could reunite with his loved ones in the beyond - but something inside of him was not ready for that yet.

_ There is some unfinished business on this side, perhaps.  _

“Oh. We have company,” Adam noted, and Mole looked back over his shoulder to see two figures emerging from the gloom, marching towards them. They were armed but didn’t appear to be serious.

“Relax. They’re Burkay’s men,” Adam said. 

The two men drew up to their fire, which Mole had set to stoking to light up the place a bit more.

“Your dog ran past us. Disappeared into the brush,” one of the men told them. 

“Yeah. We figured,” Adam said.

“Lieutenant wants to see you both. Be quick about it. He says we’re leaving soon,” the other man informed them, then the two turned their backs and walked back off. 

“Already? It’s not even daylight,” Adam said, audibly confused, and maybe a bit perturbed. Mole could sense something was wrong too. The men appeared tense, their shoulders squared up and their speech hurried. They gripped their thunder-weapons tightly and were quick to return to their camp, making good time through the darkness as they searched around with their portable lamps. 

“They appear nervous. Something is wrong,” Mole said.

“I agree,” Adam concurred. “Well...we should oblige them, anyway.”

He set the tin of stew aside, having barely touched it, and made for his portable lamp. Mole checked in on their youth but found him mercifully caught up in the grip of what appeared to be a peaceful sleep. 

He and Adam trekked up to the thunder-mens’ device they called an “airship” and waited at a perimeter for Burkay to come out. Their handlers had set up a temporary camp around the exit to their airship, sleeping on rough ground with no fire. In the harsh illumination of the ship’s affixed lamps, Mole could see a single emotion evident in the quick glances they cast at him - anxiety, palpable even at a distance. 

Burkay came out in a few moments but visibly lacked the verve of yesterday. He looked sullen, and Mole could see that his eyes were bloodshot. As he emerged from the airship’s interior, the attendant thunder-men formed a sort of semicircle around Mole and Adam, as though they were being put up to some sort of interrogation. Mole could feel a lump growing in his throat as he stared into the bloodshot eyes of fatigued, unnerved-looking strangers cradling their terrifying advanced weapons, but thankfully Adam opted to do the talking.

“Let’s not mince words, Lt. Tuzel,” Adam began. “You can feel it, can’t you?” Standing within the glow of the lights, every feature of Adam’s face was visible. His eyes were burdened by thick, puffy bags and the veins at his temples were protruding uneasily. 

“I...am not quite sure,” Burkay said, but the words escaped him in a strained manner unbefitting of him. It was obvious that he didn’t want to admit to anything in his answer.

“What do you mean.” It was more of a statement than a question. The tension was already building in Adam’s voice. 

“I...we cannot stay here for long,” said Burkay, the fatigue in his voice drawing his words out. “We need to gather more men. More materials. Equipment, and, and weapons. We will be back.”

“You’re leaving?”

“We will be back,” Burkay promised. 

Adam was not satisfied. “Lieutenant...Burkay. I know you feel it. Look at you. Look at us.”

Adam pleaded with him as he made increasingly frantic gestures. Mole looked around at the assembly. The weariness and fatigue was evident in each one’s eyes, and Mole felt fearful with each glance that he passed over. It was infectious. 

“You know there’s something wrong here. You need to help us,” Adam exhorted him. “You know it. Look at us! Look at your men! You’ve all felt it, haven’t you!?”

Burkay was looking at them, but he remained seemingly unmoved. The thunder-men heard Adam’s words but were silent. They shuffled in place or cleared their throats, gripping their weapons tightly. 

“I will bring help. You need materials, and equipment. This has to be it...this has to be the place.”

“What place?” Adam asked.

“I don’t know. It’s, well, it’s what Erich was talking about...but he never told me if…”

Burkay trailed off. 

“Speak!” Adam exhorted him.

“No more,” Burkay said, regaining some of his composure as Adam grew increasingly vexed. “I cannot do anything else today. We need to come back.”

He made several hand motions to his men and they began to move, grabbing their equipment and muttering among themselves. They were clearly leaving.

“We’re not abandoning you. This has to be the place that your overseer was looking for,” Burkay said to them, before Adam could protest. “But I need more. We’ll be back with more dropships. Two days. Can you give us that?”

The look on Adam’s face suggested that  _ no, that was impossible.  _ But Adam appeared too horrified to speak. Mole would have pitied him if he were not trapped in the same situation.

_ They’re abandoning us. They just don’t want to admit it.  _

He could feel nothing other than helplessness as the thunder-men, having retrieved their gear and loaded it away, boarded their airship again and took off into the morning sky, vanishing into the gloom within seconds.

“Son of a bitch!”

Adam swore and kicked the hard earth beneath him. 

“That son of a bitch. He’s going to leave us to die here.”

“Come on,” Mole said. “Let’s go. No use standing here in the dark.”

They descended the incline back to their camp carefully. They had a lot to think about now, and maybe not a lot of time to think about it. Their guest was, thankfully, still asleep. 

“What was he talking about, Adam?” Mole asked, as a way of breaking the silence when they returned. “He said…’it’s what Erich was talking about’-”

“I don’t know,” Adam snapped. “I don’t know.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

He thought that Adam was going to start another argument, but he was too sullen to debate anything. 

Now that Ama was gone, the camp was quiet, but as they quickly found out that state of peace wasn’t to last. Not fifteen minutes had passed since Burkay’s hasty departure before they were receiving more visitors. These ones weren’t so friendly.

“Adam. Demigaxa,” Mole said, rousing Adam from his sullen stupor. Sensing the same danger that Mole did, Adam rose to his feet, his eyes darting around the campsite for weapons. The Demigaxa were armed but they were few in number, and Mole figured that if this would result in violence, they might be able to handle themselves.

_Might be._ The Demigaxa drew in close as their guest, hearing the commotion and the approaching footsteps, began to stir in his sleep. 

“Our time with you is concluded. Why are you back?” Mole asked, taking point as the four men drew up a few paces from him. He anxiously rubbed the tips of his fingers up and down his sweat-soaked palms. 

“Your time with Odo Calibrosa, first of his name, Spear-breaker, Master of the Hunt is concluded,” the point man on their side spoke, his tone already elevated. “But we have convened. Your time with us is not over. We retain our stake to this land.”

“We bested your chieftain. You have no power over us,” Mole said.

“No,” the Demigaxa denied, with a fervent shake of his head. “We still mourn. But this land belongs to us. We have seen it so.”

“Seen it how?” Adam asked. 

“They showed us. The Ones Through the Door Beyond. They confirmed this to us, just as we have said. Our questions were answered in our dreams from the other side.”

“That means nothing for us.”

“It means everything for us,” the Demigaxa man fired back, growing visibly restless. “Our sleep was pained but we have our answers and our spirits burn fervently again. This land has been given to us and the decision is divine!”

Adam picked up the debate suddenly. “We’ve already bested your late chieftain. The deal was set in stone,” he said. “He promised that if we bested him we could stay.”

“He did,” the Demigaxa man said. “But The Ones Through the Door Beyond did not. We cannot overrule their demands.”

“Demands, pah,” Adam dismissed them, and spat in the dirt. “We will not yield.”

“Then we will take what is ours with force,” the Demigaxa man promised, but he appeared hesitant. “You have the night to depart in peace. Otherwise, we return. And no single combat now. The time for honor is done.”

They turned to leave. Mole’s palms were virtually dripping sweat. Over in the tent, their guest had finally awoken. Mole could hear him moving about.

“Well, we could have handled that worse,” Mole said in conciliatory fashion. Adam nodded his head in agreement but had nothing more to say. Sweat glistened prominently on his brow and ran down his cheeks in tiny rivulets.

Both of them turned to their new guest, who was clearly waking up from a disorienting slumber and was getting his bearings. His eyes were wide with fear as he saw the two strangers approach, no doubt fearing the worst. Mole moved quickly to comfort him.

“It’s okay. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re friends,” he reassured the youth, who didn’t appear so reassured but did not lash out at them.

“Who are you?” he asked. “You...didn’t say your names.”

“I’m Mole, and this is Adam,” Mole introduced them. “You’re with us now.”

“I am...your servant?” the youth asked, hesitant. 

Mole was quick to reject that notion. “No, no...you’re free to go. Though...you are also welcome to stay.” Side eye from Adam suggested that he didn’t quite agree on that point, but he wasn’t concerned enough to challenge it. 

“I will...stay, for now,” the youth decided, after a moment of thought. “My head hurts.”

“We can get you some water,” Mole said. “What’s your name?”

“Rani...it is Rani. Rani of the Horabati.”

“Pleased to meet you, Rani...of the Horabati,” Mole said, uncertain of whether to affix the clan name or not. Rani blinked rapidly, and for the first time Mole noticed that his pupils were significantly dilated. He bid Adam to go fetch some water and continued speaking with Rani, whose eyes remained wide open in spite of the clear discomfort he was experiencing from the ambient light. 

“How did you come by the Demigaxa?” Mole inquired, more out of curiosity than practical interest. 

“They came by me,” Rani corrected. “I was captured in a raid. It was...moons ago. Perhaps an ann.” Mole understood his temporal terminology. Rani had been a slave for almost a year, perhaps longer. From his own brief experience in captivity before being shipped off as a quarry slave, Mole knew that time flowed differently when one was restrained. 

“They did not treat me poorly. But I could not leave,” Rani said. “They said they’d beat me if I left. I never did.”

“Slavery’s wrong,” Mole said. “No matter how they treat you.”

“It’s a way of life. What am I to do?” Rani shrugged and then blinked rapidly again as the sunlight intensified. Adam arrived with water and, once the youth had several massive swigs, he laid down to rest again, rubbing his temples as he did so. 

“He seems a bit disoriented,” Mole informed Adam in a hushed voice once they broke away and returned back to the cabin. “But he’s okay otherwise.”

“What do we want to do with him?” Adam asked. 

“What do you mean, do with him?”

“Well, we can either let him stay, or send him on his way,” Adam said. “Frankly, both options seem like a death sentence at this point.”

“That is harsh,” Mole said.

“Am I wrong?”

Adam spoke with conviction, but Mole was not convinced. They had suffered much but been rewarded with good fortune in the form of a duel that was inherently in their favor. Perhaps that same brand of fortune would return for them yet? 

_ Yet where was fortune for you when you wandered the plains for days, wailing for your loss? _ His own mind was arguing with him, and it made a good point. His cries for aid, and then for the merciful release of death, had not been answered in the wake of the cave-in. The spirits had turned their backs to him, and now perhaps he ought to do the same.

_ You were the unlucky one...at the right place at the wrong time. If fortune favored you, you would have been buried with them, rock crushing muscle and bone...but you weren’t.  _

It was an unsavory thought, and Adam probably saw that Mole was deep into it, for he relented and did not push the matter further. 

“We need to think about our plan here,” Adam said, shifting the topic. “What we’re going to do.”

“You think we can flee?” 

“Hmm. Possibly,” Adam mused. “Burkay would understand if we run...but would his boss understand?”

“I do not know,” Mole said, admittedly out of his depth when it came to the nuances of such an organization. His experience with this mysterious outfit that had enslaved him and dropped him off here in the wilderness had been almost uniformly negative, and to him it was safe to assume that nothing good could come of anyone else associated with the project’s leadership. 

“It’s a risk. But one we might have to take,” Adam said. 

“We could go into the caves,” Mole suggested. “That would be a good idea.”

“And hide?”

“Until Burkay returns with his men and their...what do you call them?”

“What?”

“Their thunder-weapons.”

“Oh. Guns.”

_ Guns _ . The word seemed too simple for what it was describing. 

Adam shook his head. “We can’t even be sure that will work. They might get overwhelmed, or ambushed…”

Adam began rattling off contingencies, and Mole decided he had heard enough for now. He dismissed himself from the conversation, feeling the throbbing in his head growing to an unpleasant climax, and decided to head down to the caves for some space. 

Everything felt like it was building to a climax. He did not like it one bit. 

* * *

Mole emerged from the tunnels to the distant but unmistakable sound of screaming. Dropping his hand tools where he stood, he bolted for the ladder, knowing that the elevating cart would take too long. He scrambled up as quickly as he could, nearly losing his footing twice, and bolted towards the campsite, seeing no immediate signs of trouble but not wanting to take risks.

The sun had already delved behind the western mountains, darkening their campsite. In the flickering firelight, Mole could make out a vague shape thrashing madly on the ground in front of the fire, and another shape desperately attempting to contain the flailing. His initial fear of an attack was dispelled but clearly there was something bad happening.

“He won’t stop screaming!” Adam shouted, placing his hands firmly on Rani’s shoulders as the latter thrashed like a wounded animal in the dust. 

“What happened!?”

“I don’t know!”

Rani was evidently not conscious. His eyes were wide open but he showed no signs of recognition of the faces around him, nor anything else. He did not react to any external stimuli, but kept struggling and shouting incomprehensible words at the top of his lungs, his voice growing hoarse from the exertion of it all. Mole bent down and lent his strength to holding him down, but he would not cease yelling.

“How long!?” Mole asked, having to yell to be heard over Rani’s howling.

“A few minutes! Help!” For such a wiry man, Rani possessed unforeseen strength, almost forcing his way out of their grip before they redoubled their efforts. Amid his howls, Mole could discern a few words.

_ NO! HERE! IT! HURTS! GO! STAY! NOT!  _

His gibberish was otherwise unintelligible. But the words that Mole could make out were not encouraging. 

“Get some rope!” Adam yelled, now moving to put his hands on Rani’s shoulders again and bear the burden of holding him down. His legs kicked wildly and almost brought down the tent behind them. 

“Where!?”

“In the supplies! Go! 2nd pallet!”

Mole rushed over and, by some fortune, found a coil of thick rope in one of the supply boxes they had rifled through not long ago. It took him a moment to uncoil it, as his hands were doused in sweat, but he was quick to the restraints, and soon had Rani’s hands bound up behind his back. 

As he went for the legs, he heard a sickening crack and the youth went still, and silent.

Adam sat over him with a fist-sized rock in hand, breathing heavily and swearing under his breath. A tiny rivulet of blood ran down the side of Rani’s neck from an invisible wound hidden amid his mousy, greasy hair. 

“What was that for!?”

“Did you have a better idea!?” Adam countered. 

Mole did, but he didn’t have a moment to voice his opinion on the matter. Another series of abrasive sounds graced their ears, from farther afield. Somewhere, dogs were barking.

“Is that fucking dog back?” Adam asked, latent with fury and still panting rapidly. 

“Multiple dogs,” Mole said, trying to tune in to the sound. “Wait. Be quiet.”

It wasn’t very far away, no more than a mile. It was a couple of distinct barks at first, then joined by others. His head pounded again. It felt as though his brain were rolling around inside of his skull, moving in ways that it shouldn’t. 

“It’s the Demigaxa camp,” Mole finally realized. “Something’s happening.”

The canine chorus was building to a crescendo now, turning into one drawn-out agonized howl. The wailing strains of animal agony merged into one sickening concerto that grew increasingly violent, as though more nefarious sounds had inserted themselves into the din and somehow perverted it into something more twisted. Mole could only stand there and soak it in as the howling aggregated into a cacophony of shrieks that no living animal ought to make, followed by a ghastly minute-turned eon in which the strained wails died out, one by one, until there was nothing left.

There were no more barks to be heard, and the world around them was silent. Yet the air above him weighed on him like a soaked blanket, suffocating all thought with its mass.

“Mole,” Adam whispered, his voice cracking. “What the fuck was that?”

Mole shook his head. The boiling pain in his skull had gone as soon as it had come, but it left him feeling drained, as though he had just ran up a mountain. 

“I don’t know what that was,” Mole admitted, feeling his own voice wavering. “It’s not good.”

“Yeah. No. I...I think that’s obvious.”

Adam rose to his feet, his knees visibly shaking. Mole noticed that his hands were shaking, and his teeth were chattering. He was not cold, but his instinct for self-preservation was going haywire and driving his body into a panic. Every sense that had not been attuned to the guttural chorus of howls was screaming at him to run with wild abandon out into the night, for it could not be worse than remaining in place. Yet, he did just that.

“We can’t stay here,” Adam asserted, trying to stabilize himself by leaning up against the cabin wall nearby. “Something is terribly wrong. And we’re about to find out what it is, aren’t we.”

“You heard Burkay. He’s coming back,” Mole argued, though he couldn’t even believe that himself.

“If we stay here,” Adam stuttered, seemingly on the verge of a breakdown, “the only thing he’ll come back to is corpses.”

“He’ll be here. Two days, remember?” Mole said.

“He’s not coming back. We’re on our own. Do you get it now? We’re fucked.”

Adam took a deep breath and slammed his fist against the cabin wall. 

“We are  **FUCKED** !”

He slumped down and grabbed at the contours of his skull with white-knuckled fingers, digging in to his short strands of hair with reckless abandon. Mole could not bring himself to say anything more.

_ Help is still coming, right?  _ he wanted to ask, to Adam and to nobody in particular, in justification of his hesitancy to leave. But he couldn’t even answer that question himself - it seemed unanswerable. 

Nothing was certain now. 


	7. Adam - 4

The stench of decomposition struck them long before sunrise did. Adam, who awoke to the miasma assaulting his nostrils, could not even summon enough appetite for a small repast. Mole did not seem as bothered by the stench as he, but he was otherwise perturbed.

“The dreams keep getting worse,” he informed Adam as they sat at the firepit, staring sullenly into the embers. 

“Yeah. Mine too.”

He had dreamt of something awfully familiar, yet perverted in a fashion that was too terrible to speak of. Mole cupped his hands to his face and stared down at the ground, veins near his temples protruding threateningly. They looked as though they were going to erupt. 

Describing how he felt at that very moment was beyond his abilities. The sensation of something intruding upon his very psyche waxed and waned with the headaches, but it never left for good, and its comings and goings were unpredictable. Adam wondered briefly if they had somehow been poisoned, either through their food or their water source, but the fact that Burkay and his men had appeared to suffer from a similar malady even after just a single overnight stay dispelled that idea. 

While the idea of some kind of metaphysical toxin would have seemed implausible to him a month ago, nothing at X-16 adhered to the familiar rules he had been brought up with. There was no denying that something was eating away at them like a cancer, but its nature eluded all investigation so far. They passed a few hours in silence before Mole finally had the gall to speak up.

“We should check out the camp,” Mole suggested. “But cautiously.”

“Be my guest,” Adam said dismissively. “I’m not going anywhere near there. You and I heard the same things last night, right? Or am I going crazy?”

That was meant to be a rhetorical question, but he wanted so badly for Mole to say  _ no, you’re not going crazy _ . 

“I heard it, yes,” Mole confirmed. “But I do not want to sit here any longer. In my tribe such disturbances would have been scouted, even if it was dangerous.”

“Well maybe it’s little wonder then that your tribe got wiped out,” Adam said. He immediately regretted such an acerbic comment when he saw Mole’s face grow pale and the corners of his mouth curl downward. 

Adam apologized hastily. “I’m sorry. That was untoward.” Mole mouthed a halfhearted acceptance of his apology but was clearly affected by the statement. 

“Alright, alright, I’ll go with you,” Adam relented, “if you want to scout their camp.” He didn’t know what else to say. His head throbbed and his stomach growled, though he could not bring himself to eat anything with the stench of death filling his nostrils. His comment felt as though it was spoken by another, but in his own voice. 

That lifted Mole’s spirits a bit, as he rose from the campfire as if motivated, but he had nothing to say for the moment. Adam wanted to chide him for his sensitivity, but he tried to suppress the urge to provoke him further. He grit his teeth against the pain in his head and the dawning horror that an unseen presence was motivating his behavior, and went off with Mole out of the quarry, leaving the sleeping Rani behind in his tent.

When they crested the ridge of the valley that contained the Demigaxa camp, they could already see the aftermath strewn below. Even from a distance, bodies could be picked out amid the ruins of tattered tents, discarded materials, and ashes. As they descended Adam felt like they were stepping into a waking nightmare. Scattered amid the dust and dirt were bodies of all types - men and women, young children, dogs and ponies, and even the hulking white carcasses of a couple of muffalo, one of them still groaning in agony. The ground was splattered with blood and the scent of it was thick in the air like clotted cream. 

Adam could do little more than swear repeatedly under his breath. 

“I don’t believe it,” Mole said aloud as they stepped into the bounds of the camp, passing abandoned tents and even more bodies strewn about randomly. 

“Were they attacked?” Adam ventured, pressing his palm to his nose to ward off the scent.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Mole said, and bent down to the shattered corpse of a mangy brown dog, its fur matted with blood, to investigate. “These are bite marks,” he decided, after a few seconds of investigation. The limp body of a smaller dog and a man’s corpse lay nearby, both savaged violently and covered in bite marks and various lacerations. 

“This was no attack,” Mole said. “Not by humans, anyway.”

“It can’t be wild animals.”

“No,” Mole agreed. “It was the dogs.”

“How, though?” Adam asked, incredulous.

Mole shook his head. They stumbled on towards the center of camp, where he had slain Odo Calibrosa just two nights ago, but found nothing living amid the tents and furnishings. Everywhere Adam looked, he could see at least one body, savaged in animalistic fashion.

“Something drove the dogs to do this,” Adam ventured. “It couldn’t be anything else?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say,” Mole said, his voice becoming shaken. 

Adam had seen enough. “We shouldn’t be here,” he said. “We should take what we can carry and leave this place.”

“No. We shouldn’t take anything,” Mole disagreed.

“We should at least take what we can use, right?” 

“I don’t want to touch any of this,” Mole said, as he started backing out in the direction that they had walked in. “It’s all cursed.”

“Some of it might be useful!”

Mole would not hear his arguments. “We need to leave this place. Now.”

Adam firmly believed that they were wasting a golden opportunity by not scavenging the site, but Mole had already made to leave, reiterating his previous statement. “This is all cursed. We can’t take it,” he said, and began quickly moving out of earshot, prompting Adam to follow behind him, a bit frustrated. Perhaps he would come back later, in the dead of night when Mole was fast asleep, to take what he could find. The passing notion of stumbling through an abandoned camp full of dead men and slaughtered animals in the dead of night quickly changed his mind, and he gave up on trying. 

The odor of death clung to their clothes and hair even as they retreated from its vice grip, back to the perceived safety of their camp. But even now, Adam could not feel safe. He felt like a goldfish trapped in a bowl, only this one was made of limestone and dolomite. Even now, sitting by their campfire in broad daylight, he felt distinctly uncomfortable. 

“Are you going to go down into the tunnels?” Adam asked Mole, trying to make conversation as the minutes oozed by achingly. 

Mole shook his head, for the first time in Adam’s experience showing hesitation about the caves. “No. Don’t think it’s good for now,” Mole said. 

“Cooler down there,” Adam reminded him. 

Mole shook his head again. 

“I’d rather not be here at all, if I had a choice,” Mole said. 

Adam understood that sentiment. He nodded a sober acknowledgement. 

Mere seconds had passed before Rani began howling madly. Shaking off the polyester sheet draped over his body and thrashing his limbs about in the tent, he screamed and shouted in a tongue foreign to both of them. Adam leapt into action before the youth could hurt himself, but found that he was being overpowered by the sheer energy that Rani was overtaken by.

“Help me!” he called to Mole, and Mole, sensing that they needed a longer term solution than just tying him down, grabbed a fat chunk of wood from out of the firepit. As Adam struggled to hold Rani’s arms down while the youth’s raving flung spittle in his face, Mole knocked him aside with his body, and quickly delivered a blow to Rani’s temple that knocked him out cold. The flailing stopped, his limbs lost their livelihood, and he fell silent again, a knotty lump swelling up on the side of his head.

“That might have been uncalled for,” Adam said, gasping for breath as he sat back.

“Well. You were having trouble,” Mole said, matter-of-factly. He shrugged his shoulders and tossed the wood stave aside, and sat down as well. 

“I don’t think we have any drugs to sedate him,” Adam said aloud. Mole shook his head but it was unlikely, Adam thought, that he understood what either of those words meant. He had agreed based on Adam’s tone of voice, which was admittedly fairly defeatist. Nothing seemed to be going their way.

“We should give him to Burkay,” Adam suggested. “There’s nothing for him here.”

“He won’t take him,” Mole dissented. 

“They can always sell him,” Adam said. It was a statement that sent a chill down his spine.  _ Look at me, casually talking about selling human beings as chattel _ , he taunted himself, but he couldn’t see another feasible way to get the beleaguered teen to a safer location. It was clear that he wasn’t safe in this valley, and sending him off on his own into the wilderness would be a death sentence. Neither option was particularly good.

“Worth a try,” Mole relented.

“I’ll pull him up on the radio. He should be alerted beforehand,” Adam said. Burkay would be back soon - as he promised, after all - but maybe he’d be more likely to assent to the plan if Adam informed him prior to their next encounter. He marched over to the cabin and pulled the clunky radio out of its storage hold beneath their crude dining table, then marched back out to the firepit to set the device up and raise Burkay.

Trouble was, he wasn’t getting any signal.

At first, he imagined it must be a minor technical issue, something he had done wrong in the setup process that could be ameliorated with a bit of troubleshooting and some clever modifications. However, after tinkering with the device for twenty straight minutes, Mole watching all the while, he realized that something else was up.

“What’s wrong?” Mole asked, noticing Adam growing visibly discomfited. 

“Can’t get a signal,” Adam said. 

“Not working?” Mole ventured.

Adam grunted as he gave the hefty receiver box a swift kick. “Not like it should.”

His frustration began to turn to anxiety, and then to fear, as he realized that their one point of contact to familiarity was now inaccessible. More tinkering produced nothing. Something was interfering with the signal. 

_ If I were a true technician _ , Adam thought, as he sat on the verge of admitting defeat,  _ maybe I could have a eureka moment.  _ But his technical knowledge was limited to the off-duty tinkering he had done with consumer-grade electronics back home, back when he had an entire flat to himself and weekends off and a nice paycheck to supplement all that time and space…

“We’re out of reach,” Adam conceded. “I can’t get through.”

Though Mole did not understand the technical complexity of the device, he was visibly perturbed too. The meaning of Adam’s words were clear enough. They were on their own.

“Something’s blocking the signal. This hasn’t happened before,” Adam moaned, and shoved the radio aside, clasping his hands to the side of his head. 

“Maybe wait a little while,” Mole suggested. “I am going to scout their camp again. See if anyone returned.”

Adam didn’t want Mole to leave but he wanted some privacy too. As his partner left, he returned to the cabin, slammed his fists into the wall a few times until his knuckles were bruised, drank two cups of coffee, then ran his fingers through his grimy hair and tried to console and center himself until Mole returned, empty-handed.

“Anything?” Adam asked. The sun was starting to set now. He could feel nighttime creeping up, and it was a genuinely dreadful sensation. 

“Nobody. Either no one camp back, or no one made it out,” Mole said. He shuddered a bit involuntarily. Adam volunteered to whip up a small dinner but neither of them had appetites, as they barely touched the tomato-and-olive salad that he dished out for them in food tins as they started up the fire and took their seats. 

“Your background is strange,” Mole said, sparking conversation as he sparked the fire. “You’re not from this land.”

“No,” Adam said.    
“Where do you come from, then?”

Adam sighed. He felt like he was being drawn into a conversation that he had no hope of escaping, but he didn’t want to sit around the fire in silence while darkness crept up on them. Even meagre conversation was better than nothing.

“I think it’s hard to explain to you,” “Your...conception of what a world is is different from mine.”

“Well,” Mole started, a little taken aback, then stopped himself. “What do you mean?”

“You grew up underground. You lived in a cave, with simple tools and simple ways of living,” Adam said.    
“It fit our lifestyle.”

“Yes. Well,” Adam continued, “my world is nothing like that. I do not even come from this planet. There’s another out there, like this but...different.”

Mole was trying to connect the dots and understand what Adam was saying. He was by no means a slow man; on the contrary, he was perfectly intellectually capable. But the notion of things beyond the cavern he had called home, and the surface world above it, seemed to escape him. So Adam set to explaining, in the easiest way he could.

“This world exists in a space. It has air, water, and land. So does mine. They both exist...in a space. A vast space. Beyond the sky,” Adam explained.

“Where the stars are,” Mole said.

“Yes!”

Mole flashed a brief but genuine smile. He was getting invested. 

“Each of those stars has...planets, like mine. And this one. Yours,” Adam said.

“Impossible,” Mole said, frowning. “The stars are doors to the Beyond. One can only step through them when they’ve passed on.”

“Hmmm. I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“I’m sorry,” Mole apologized. “I was told from birth...all of what you say is foreign. Strange. I cannot quite grasp it.”

“It’s fine,” Adam brushed it off, not wanting to intrude too much on Mole’s clearly antiquated upbringing. “My home was another world like this one. But very...built up. Very different. You remember the compound we were imprisoned in?”

How could Mole forget? Adam certainly couldn’t. It was a drab compound of concrete and cinder bricks erected at the base of a boulder-dotted hillock amid a dismal swamp, one that reeked of methane and mildew and promised pestilence with every whiff. They had spent days in a crowded prison block, with harsh electrical lights and outdated plumbing systems, subdued and observed by gruff, thick-armed men bearing submachine guns and ancient-model galvaknuckles that could put a man on his ass in a single blow. It had likely been Mole’s first true contact with any trace of industrial technology, barring any encounters with outlanders or smugglers in his youth. 

“It was horrid,” Mole remembered, frowning. “If your home is like that, I am very sorry.”

“No, no,” Adam rushed to correct himself. “It was quite different. I was trying to set the standard. You remember the lights...and the toilet? And the metal pipes overhead that screamed at night?”

Mole nodded, clearly uncomfortable in his memory. Adam decided to quickly segue his recollection into something more productive, more interesting.

“Home was built with similar materials but everything was better...it was like-”

And he began to dive in as the sun dipped behind the mountains to their west. For several minutes, his dread of nightfall was forgotten as he entered a state of reverie, describing his homeworld to an increasingly rapt Mole. 

He led Mole through an imaginary tour of a labyrinth of towering plasteel skyscrapers, girded by multiple levels of rail tracks, streets, and walkways. Skycraft swooped over the cityscape, traveling from one urban center to another and projecting holographic billboards in their wake, and in the tallest towers men in silk suits and ladies in hyperweave dresses that amplified their shape shared the finest bourbon and arak, toasting their inevitable successes in ruling and prospering. And he spun tales of his own world - the world of booze-soaked nightclubs, glitzy dance floors tacked on to hyper-plexes like sequins on a dress, and dingy bars with social credits hitting rock bottom. 

Mole did not quite understand  _ why  _ bouncers existed, but he understood their purpose and their role. And that was enough for him to lend more respect to Adam.

“No wonder you’re so good with your fists,” Mole said, his eyes gleaming as Adam wrapped up his tour. “You’ve worked with them all your life.”

“Well, since I was a teenager. But I guess that’s still young,” Adam conceded. “Call it a calling.”

“Did you ever drink?” Mole asked.

“Oh, all the time,” Adam admitted flippantly. “But not on the job.”

“I suppose that would be a problem when working,” Mole admitted, smiling weakly.

“Oh, yes. It happened sometimes, to others, but never to me,” Adam said. “If it did, well...I would have had to bounce myself. And I don’t think you’d want to see that.”

“Maybe I would, with that arm of yours,” Mole admitted, and then he broke into a grin that turned into a chuckle. 

Adam quickly joined in, finding the image of him beating himself to a pulp for drinking on the job somewhat oddly amusing. They began guffawing together, each playing into the other’s humor, but as their laughter traveled up into the mountain looming above them, it gave birth to a distorted, mocking echo that made them both fall silent as it cackled back at them. The echo took on a life of its own, waxing and waning as it rolled over the face of the mountain and down to them and then back again. Adam’s blood ran cold and all whimsical thoughts of irony and his old occupation were forgotten as the mad laughter finally faded. When the campsite fell silent, Adam became keenly aware of how quiet the world around them was.

_ Not even a cricket _ , he noted with a spark of horror. 

“Adam,” Mole said, all hint of cheer drained from his voice. “We shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh. You want to go inside?”

“No, I mean...we shouldn’t be here. In this place. In this valley.”

The words made his blood run cold, but Mole was right. He knew deep down that they should’ve left that morning, or the day before, should’ve run away and not looked back, but it was far too late for that. And maybe far too late for them. 

The shadows around their campsite seemed thicker than usual, as though the flickering firelight was having difficulty penetrating them. Adam, perhaps out of childish fear or perhaps out of a real instinctive sense of danger, dared not venture beyond the constricted firelight with even an exploratory foot or finger, for fear of engaging with a darkness beyond darkness, a preternatural phenomenon that would embrace him in such a way that he would simply cease to be. Even though it had swallowed up their supply pallet and all of the food and medicine that they could not store in the cabin, he dared not venture further than the hazy edge of the campfire’s glow. 

“We should not sleep this night,” Mole suggested. “I fear otherwise it might be our last.”

Adam wanted to ask  _ what makes you say that? _ , as though it were a juvenile concern that could be easily dispelled through rational thinking. But he agreed. 

“Yeah. Well. We’ve got working eyes. We can watch each other’s backs,” Adam said. “It’s dark out there.”

“More than dark,” Mole agreed, and set himself to stoking the fire as they settled in for their long watch. “Got any more stories?”

Adam did, but now did not seem appropriate. He was more than happy to let the silence reign supreme now. He could not shake the feeling once again that they were being watched. 


	8. Mole - 4

Mole woke up thinking that it was still nighttime. He had, to his embarrassment, failed to maintain his watch, though he had stayed awake longer than Adam had. 

To his surprise, however, Rani was awake and seemed fairly functional, as he was tending the fire at the moment and seemed to be in full possession of his faculties. 

“Wake Adam up,” Mole ordered him, the moment he had regained his senses and blinked away the covers of sleep.

Rani obliged wordlessly, shifting over to where Adam lay on the ground, curled up by the firepit like a dog. He gave the man a few heavy shakes and, when that failed to work, kicked him hard in the leg. Adam woke with a start and swore loudly. 

“I didn’t mean to,” he grumbled, rubbing his leg where he had been kicked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...is it still nighttime?”

“No,” Rani answered. “Look.”

He pointed towards the horizon, but it took Mole a moment to understand what he was trying to turn their attention to. A hazy rose shade could be spotted just at the edge of the eastern horizon over the mountains, but the world around them was still dark. The reddish rose hue that was barely visible from their position was not the color of dawn, but an earlier morning. 

“What’s he pointing at? Mole?” Adam asked, confused and perturbed. In his struggle to get back on his feet he nearly fell backwards into the firepit, cursing himself.

“Nothing in particular, at least not that we can see,” Mole said, feeling a jolt of fear rattle its way up his spine as he realized what Rani was trying to tell them. “It’s an eclipse.”

The very word made him shudder involuntarily. From birth, he had been told the horrible stories of the surface during an eclipse, the kind that had made him cry and seek the comfort of his mother’s breast in terror - stories of two-headed men and pus-dripping ghouls, of creatures that were half-man and half-fly and of beasts that would descend from the sky to feed on the flesh of man. His subterranean community had taken the threat so seriously that when an eclipse threatened, a heavy boulder was moved up against the only passage that connected them to the outside world, so that the fiends could not enter the sanctuary of the cave. Even as an adult, when roaming the dusty plains for prey, he had feared the onset of an eclipse during a hunt, as he would almost invariably be locked out of the cavern and condemned to his doom on the surface. 

So far, the world around them was quiet. But it was not a comforting sort of silence - rather, it was an absence of sound that preceded something calamitous. Mole could feel the tension building up in his nerves, and the terror of the world around him that he had felt so keenly overnight was returning swiftly after his brief respite. 

“Ah,” Adam commented, sounding significantly less concerned about the unexpected event than Mole himself had been. “I guess that’s...timely. Because why not. Why not have an eclipse.”

Adam spun around to face them after surveying the horizon for a bit. “Well, should we-”

“We are in grave danger,” Rani interjected. Before Adam could voice his disapproval of the interruption, Rani gripped the sides of his head and buckled over, wincing as though injured by an invisible force. It was so sudden and so extreme that Mole felt like he was experiencing something too, as if the pain was spreading by proxy. He chalked it up to his own anxiety as Rani seemingly recovered within about half a minute, rising back to his feet with Adam’s help.   
“Grave danger from what?” Mole asked, taking the youth’s first truly lucid words to them seriously given their current situation. 

“I don’t know what it is,” Rani said. “I’d tell you if I did.”

“Well you can’t just say that,” Adam argued. “I mean…”

“How do you know this?” Mole asked. 

Rani shook his head suddenly, and hesitated. A hot wind rolled off the cliff face above and down upon them, carrying with it a foul smell reminiscent of volatile sel, a pungent powder that his tribe had used to invigorate warriors before a sparring match. Mole felt his gut start to heave when the smell hit him, so strong was it; it was enough to make Adam stagger back to the nearest seat, throwing his hand to his nose. 

“I have a sense. My people called it the  _ pull _ ,” Rani explained, as the smell was lifted by another breeze from a different direction. “It’s like...a way you know certain things.”

“Oh, you’re a mindreader?”

Mole knew what he was talking about without them sharing the same vernacular. Though Mole was incapable of understanding the complex nature of psionic powers and their various manifestations in human beings, he did understand his own experiences with psionically gifted individuals in his own tribe - only two in all of their history, there were, but revered figures nonetheless. 

“If that is what you call it,” Rani said, hesitant. “We’re talking about the same thing, right?”

“You can feel the sixth sense. You can get into the heads of others. You can feel things others cannot,” said Mole. “Is that the same thing?”

“Yes. Yes,” Rani confirmed. “You too?”

Mole shook his head. “No. Not me. But I know.”

“It’s a curse,” Rani sighed. “But it has power. The  _ pull _ tells me things it won’t tell you two...you are dead to it-”

Adam’s lips curled downward, as though he had been mildly insulted. 

“-and it is dead to you. But it lives in me,” Rani continued, “and now I can see and think clearly. Though my mind is tired it flows in me. I know where we are and what we must do. Plain as day.”

There was no mistaking the sound of confidence in the youth’s voice, though Mole could tell by the expression on Adam’s face that he was increasingly uncertain about whether or not Rani could be believed. But even Mole had his doubts. After all, mindreaders were such a rare breed, that in all his days with his people the elders had only spoken of two by name. And yet, he had not seen Rani so cognizant of his situation ever since they had acquired him from the Demigaxa with the blood price Adam paid. Rani seemed not only conscious, but his eyes were alight with a sort of life that Mole had not seen in them before. 

“We have to leave here,” Rani said soberly. “We need to leave now.”

“And go where?” Adam asked. “If we leave, we-”

“Beneath the mountain. I can feel it. There’s something there,” Rani said. Mole’s heart skipped a beat. He couldn’t be talking about...no, that couldn’t be it. That shouldn’t be it. But he could feel bile rising in his throat. 

“The tunnels? Why?”

“There’s no time,” Rani said, already scrambling to abandon the camp, having no possessions of his own to take with him. “Is there a way under the mountain?”

“We have tunnels, yeah, but-”

“Then we have to go-”

“Wait, wait,” Mole interrupted, already rising to his feet but hesitating due to some unknown instinct. “You said under the mountain. What’s under the mountain?”

“I don’t know,” Rani said, shaking his head as his bare feet nervously shuffled in the dust and he picked relentlessly at the cuticles on his thumbs. “There’s something there. I could feel it before. But now, with the sun covered...it’s stronger than ever. It calls.”

“You can’t be serious,” Adam interjected, but Mole hastily raised a hand to shush him. In the wavering firelight, the rapid movement of his arm cast an unnervingly hazy shadow on the ground, one that disappeared into the unsettled miasma of darkness surrounding them. 

“Tell me what you’re feeling,” Mole demanded, looking Rani straight in the eyes. Rani bit his lower lip with filthy exposed teeth. His cuticles were bleeding, so intense was his harassment of them. 

“You can feel it, can’t you?” Rani asked, his voice starting to quaver. “The pulse. The pulse. Like a drumbeat. In your head. You can feel it?”

Mole nodded. Adam nodded too, slowly. Even now, Mole could feel it. Unpleasant, but not as painful as it had been before - he had grown somewhat accustomed to its regular presence in his life, even when it began to feel like it was driving him, urging him on to do things antithetical to his moral code. 

Adam seemed almost as restless as Rani. “You say you feel it, but what does it mean?” he asked, his voice starting to slip. Fear was seeping into him. The same thing was happening to Mole. The light of the fire suddenly didn’t feel as sufficient in warding off the darkness as it had earlier. It felt weaker, like it had somehow been drained of its energy, and he was keenly aware that the sharp scent of earlier had returned. 

“Do you smell that?” Adam asked, jumping as though somebody had touched him unexpectedly. “Again, I smell it-”

He sniffed the air and recoiled.

“Ammonia. Christ. That’s strong.”

_ Ammonia. I’ve smelled this before, too _ , Mole thought. He had smelled it down in the caves before; each time, it had been accompanied by an unseen, unknown terror. He felt ill. 

Adam’s hands were shaking as he stood by the fire, facing out into the darkness. Though it must have been morning by now, not a single ray of light shone from the sky above - the sun had been virtually extinguished. His senses overwhelmed and his mind racing with all the untold horrors that an eclipse could bring, Mole felt his knees start to quake, and it took all his strength to keep himself on his feet and turn back to Rani, who was now virtually drained of color.

“It calls to me. It doesn’t just pound in my head like a drum. It speaks to me. Wants me to come,” Rani said. “We have to follow.”

Now, Mole was beginning to realize that this might not be such a good idea. He felt like he had to push back. Just as he was about to try and assert himself over Rani and attempt to calm the youth down, the clear sound of branches cracking and foliage moving could be heard from the ridgetop above. The acrid scent grew even stronger, and Rani could not control himself anymore. He ran.

Mole was the first to go after him, pausing only to grab a stave out of the fire to light the way forward. Rani had vanished into the darkness but if what he said was correct, and something was pulling him into the tunnels, he would find his way. 

Adam was not far behind, though Mole dared not look behind him, for fear of seeing something else more menacing emerge. Rather, he forged on ahead until he reached the dropoff where the quarry met the beginning of their excavation project. Standing on the precipice, looking down forty feet to the cavern floor below, Mole could not spot Rani. He had either descended the rickety wooden ladder at record speed, or had simply opted to slide down the nearly-vertical rock face. Either way, he was gone. 

“Mole, wait up!”

Adam called out from the gloom behind him but Mole was not keen to wait. He shimmied on down the ladder by himself, nearly losing his grip halfway down but managing to prevent himself from falling, and jumped the last six or seven feet to the hard rock floor below. 

Mole pressed on. The pounding in his head was now very noticeable -  _ most likely because you’re thinking about it,  _ he told himself. The lamps that Adam had set up were thankfully still operating, illuminating large chunks of the main tunnel that Mole somehow knew Rani had set off down.

What else would he be looking for? What else besides those strange dead-ends with chiseled stairways that  _ no  _ aspect of nature could ever have made? That was the only thing Mole could think about as he found the section of the tunnel where it diverged - the babbling subterranean brook ran off to the left into a gaping maw of darkness, and the chiseled out space he had wiggled through numerous times went to his right. He went right. 

“Mole, for fuck’s sake!” a voice rang out behind him. Distant. But still there. Adam had made it into the caves, at least. He would not be happy to have been left behind, even if it was momentary.

Mole shimmied through the narrow passage to the other side, but then found himself at an impasse. The tunnel branched out - but which way did Rani go? As he stood there pondering the path forward, he could hear footsteps and heavy breathing behind him. Alarmed, he turned around only to find Adam on the other side of the narrow passage, pointing a handheld lamp in his direction. The beam struck Mole right in the face and made him recoil.

“Lower your damn light,” Mole growled.   
“Sorry, sorry,” Adam apologized hastily, clutching his free hand to his breast as he began moving through the tunnel. “You left me.”

“I had to. I had to go,” Mole said. 

Adam did not seem convinced. “No. You could’ve waited five seconds,” he argued, grimacing as he struggled into the tunnel. “I swore, I could hear something sliding down the quarry slope after me as I ran…I didn’t look back, but I heard it...”

Mole opted for the right-hand path as Adam popped out on the other side behind him. It wasn’t even an instinctual choice. Rather, he had just picked one, and hoped for the best. 

Neither of them spoke as they proceeded down the tunnel, their path ahead lit only by Mole’s flickering orange torchlight and Adam’s more robust white handheld lamp. Adam jumped at every unexpected sound, and even Mole found himself uncomfortable as they forged onwards. He feared another run in with the phenomenon he had experienced before, an encounter that this time there would be no escape from. But they found Rani before anything else could. 

Rani stood staring at the endpoint of the corridor, just before the tunnel began sloping downward. His toes curled on the edge of the chiseled step and his hands were balled into fists as he stared into the rock in front of him. He was aware of their presence, but said nothing to them.

“Rani,” Mole called out his name, holding his torch out as far as he could in front of him. In the faltering torchlight, Rani’s shadow looked positively ominous on the flat, unmarred rock surface, where it began taking on strange features that Mole knew he didn’t actually have. It made him recoil and want to flee, but he knew they couldn’t go back now. That sharp scent - Adam had called it ammonia, though Mole’s tribe had no such word in their lexicon - had been wafting through their camp again when they left. Whatever horror accompanied it was likely following them. With a looming sense of horror, Mole realized that they were at a dead end.

“We have to find somewhere to hide,” he urged them both. Neither reacted. Rani would not move, would not even respond to him. He turned to Adam, but could only see fear in the man’s eyes. They were soon to reach a point of no return. 

“We have to go,” Mole urged them on. “Rani. Where is it?”

Rani would not respond.

“Rani,” Mole repeated, his voice wavering. “Where. Do. We go.”

“It’s beyond here,” Rani said, finally answering after another few seconds of silence.

Mole didn’t understand. “No, we can’t go forward. It’s a wall, see? It’s-”

Rani moved slowly down the stairs and placed his palm on the unsullied rock wall, only for it to now give way to his touch and slide back into darkness. The passage opened up, beckoning them onward.

“Oh. No, no, no,” Adam whispered behind them, alarmed. 

Mole shook his head, as though doing so would disperse an illusion before him. But he opened his eyes, and the way was open. “That’s not possible,” he said aloud, but it was.

“We must go,” Rani urged them, without turning around. “I can feel it’s pull. Oh, it hurts…”

He stepped into the darkness anyway, and Mole knew it was now or never. Grabbing Adam by his shirt collar, he pulled them both into the passageway ahead, ignoring Adam’s whispered protests. 

The rock moved behind them, stone grating against stone. It scraped back into place as though guided by an unseen hand, sealing them in.

They had stepped into a different world. 

The passage ahead was clearly manmade but bore no markings of any tribe that Mole was familiar with. The passage forked off left and right ahead but the corners were angular, and carved into something resembling strange columns with markings on them that Mole could not discern, nor understand. He felt as though he had to avert his eyes from them, so intense was the feeling of dissociation and confusion he felt when he happened to glance in their direction. Instead, his gaze fell upon the walls of the corridor around them, which were marred by straight lines that appeared to travel along the rock wall with no particular structure to them - they sailed forward then shot upward, recurved among themselves and hurled out in a diagonal direction, disappearing into the ceiling. Mole could not tell what they meant or what they were, but they were more pleasant to look at than the columns as they moved on. 

Rani led the way, and Mole had to virtually pull Adam for a while until he had recovered his senses. He moved forward slowly after that, but had ceased to be completely transfixed by fear and had regained some of his senses, though he remained quiet.

They all did, to be fair. None of them spoke a word as they progressed through this alien environment. Mole observed that many times they reached a four-way intersection of passages, suggesting they had entered a labyrinth of some sort. Rani did not appear perturbed by this, as he moved forward effortlessly, following some invisible intuition that Mole would have been concerned about if the youth had not found his way to the “dead-end” before without any previous clue about its existence. The fact that Rani had gotten this far was testament to his strange abilities. 

Suddenly, Rani stopped in place. Mole nearly bumped into him, and Adam almost did the same. Mole’s torch sputtered out as he slammed it against the rock wall nearby inadvertently, leaving only Adam’s hand lamp as their source of light. 

“Uff, Rani, what-”

Rani cut him off before he could even speak. “We’re no longer alone in here.”

Mole’s blood ran cold. A faint hint of the pungent aroma traveled around the corner from ahead. He could hear something moving in the tunnels beyond. It was a distant sound, but a familiar one.

_ Slap. _

_ Slap. _

_ Slap.  _

Rani began to move again, but this time he seemed a little less certain of himself. With the introduction of this new and frightening factor, his ceaseless forward march through the bizarre maze grew slower and he hesitated more at each junction. Twice, Mole could hear the wet sound of something fleshy hitting the stones in the distance, but they always managed to move away from it, and keep going forward. 

At some point, the pounding in Mole’s head began to grow to a fierce climax. No longer able to be ignored, it made itself known at the front of his skull like an aching tumor, pressing up against bone and burning like a fire in his brain. 

He tried to steel himself against it at first, clench his teeth and his fists and steady himself by putting his hand on the wall so that he could focus on subduing the pain, training his ears to Rani’s footsteps to make sure he was keeping up as he squinted against the pain and turned his eyes downward. For a brief minute, it worked; but then he realized that he was only hearing one pair of footsteps. It was Rani’s. Adam’s were missing.

He opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by complete darkness. Rani’s footsteps moved on into the gloom, as the youth pressed on unhindered, but Mole found himself suddenly panicking. 

Adam, and his light, were gone. 

“Rani,” Mole whispered, groaning as he could feel something throbbing behind his eyes with all the energy of a caged hyena lashing out. “Rani. Stop. We lost. Adam.”

He could barely talk. All he wanted to do was to lay down, close his eyes, and rest for a moment.  _ Gods, if you can hear me all the way down here, in this miserable place, let me rest.  _ He just wanted a brief respite. Not even a nap, that would be too much to ask for and would be excessive given the circumstances; no, just a moment’s peace on the cold, hard floor.

As they jointly stumbled on through the darkness, bereft of light and relying on Rani’s sixth sense to propel them forward, Mole sensed a change in the environment around him. Even with his senses overwhelmed by pain he could feel the air growing colder and the scent of something  _ mechanical _ , like the thunder-mens’ implements Adam had shown him, growing stronger. The last thing he saw before he collapsed was the obelisk, black as night and looming in the middle of a vast square chamber with no visible ceiling, illuminating itself as if welcoming them. 


End file.
